DOCSLIB.ORG

Locating VS Naipaul

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Locating VS Naipaul V.S. Naipaul Homelessness and Exiled Identity Roshan Cader 12461997 Supervisors: Professor Dirk Klopper and Dr. Ashraf Jamal November 2008 Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (English) at the University of Stellenbosch Declaration I, Roshan Cader, hereby declare that the work contained in this research assignment/thesis is my own original work and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it at any university for a degree. Signature:……………………….. Date:…………………………….. 2 Abstract Thinking through notions of homelessness and exile, this study aims to explore how V.S. Naipaul engages with questions of the construction of self and the world after empire, as represented in four key texts: The Mimic Men, A Bend in the River, The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World. These texts not only map the mobility of the writer traversing vast geographical and cultural terrains as a testament to his nomadic existence, but also follow the writer’s experimentation with the novel genre. Drawing on postcolonial theory, modernist literary poetics, and aspects of critical and postmodern theory, this study illuminates the position of the migrant figure in a liminal space, a space that unsettles the authorising claims of Enlightenment thought and disrupts teleological narrative structures and coherent, homogenous constructions of the self. What emerges is the contiguity of the postcolonial, the modern and the modernist subject. This study engages with the concepts of “double consciousness” and “entanglements” to foreground the complex web and often conflicting temporalities, discourses and cultural assemblages affecting postcolonial subjectivities and unsettling narratives of origin and authenticity. While Naipaul seeks to address questions of postcolonial identity, his oeuvre is simultaneously entangled within the Anglophone literary tradition. The texts in this study foreground the convergence of the politics of writing and the politics of subjectivity. Through continuous re-writing of the self, the past and history, Naipaul focuses on the fragmentary, the partiality of knowledge and the obscurity of the present to evince the continuous renewal of subjectivities. His narratives enact deep feelings of despair and melancholy that attend the migrant position in the current age of mass migrations, technological advancement, militarism, and essentialised ethnocentrisms and cultural constructions. In his poetics of exile, he endorses the particular over the universal. His commitment to a “politics of difference” underscores the texts in this study and serves to foreground Naipaul’s position of otherness. 3 Opsomming Aan die hand van die begrippe, ontheemding en ballingskap —wat beide die ontheemde subjek impliseer—ondersoek hierdie studie V.S. Naipaul se post- imperiale konstruksies van die self en die wêreld. Vier sleuteltekste, The Mimic Men, A Bend in the River, The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World, getuig van die mobiliteit van die skrywer, sy nomadiese ervaring van ’n wye spektrum van geografiese en kulturele terreine, asook van sy eksperimentering met die genre van die roman. Met verwysing na post-koloniale en modernistiese teorie, belig hierdie studie die posisie van die migrant in die tussenruimte, wat enersyds ’n ondermynende invloed het op die outoriserende diskoers van die Verligtings- paradigma, en andersyds teleologiese narratiewe strukture en homogene self- konstruksies destabiliseer. Wat gevolglik duidelik word is die verwantskap tussen die post-koloniale, die moderne subjek en die subjek van modernisme. Die studie betrek die konsepte van “dubbele bewussyn” en “verwikkeldhede” (“entanglements”) om die komplekse werking te belig van die dikwels teenstrydige temporaliteite, diskoerse en kulturele konstrukte wat postkoloniale subjekte affekteer, asook destabiliserende narratiewe van oorsprong en outentiekheid. Insoverre Naipaul postkoloniale identiteit onder die loep neem, is sy oeuvre ook in die Engelstalige literêre tradisie verwikkel; aldus stel hierdie studie die gepaardgaande politieke diskoerse van literêre komposisie en van subjektiwiteit op die voorgrond. By wyse van ’n volgehoue herskrywing van die self, die verlede en die geskiedenis, fokus Naipaul op die gefragmenteerde, die partydigheid van kennis, en die ontwykende karakter van die hede. Sy werk herroep die gevoel van wanhoop en melankolie wat spruit uit die posisie van die migrant in ’n konteks van massa migrasies, tegnologiese vooruitgang, militarisime, asook essentialistiese etnosentrisme en kulturele konstruksies. In sy poetika van ballingskap onderskryf hy die partikulêre teenoor die universele. Sy verbintenis tot ’n “politiek van verskil” is grondliggend aan die vier romans waarop hierdie studie fokus, en belig Naipaul se posisie ten aansien van andersheid. 4 The writer at work: “In the dream of writing I was attracted less by the act and the labour than by the calm and the order which the act would have implied.” (V.S. Naipaul) 5 Acknowledgments I would not have surfaced out of the mire of my Naipaulian world(s) had it not been for the eternal patience, enduring support and encouragement of my supervisors. Prof. Dirk Klopper, who provided close and careful readings, commentary and insight which this work has greatly benefited from. Dr. Ashraf Jamal, who taught me to take a sceptic’s leap of faith, and offered invaluable suggestions and bristling intellectual engagement. To the Andrew Mellon Foundation for its financial assistance. To my mum and dad, whose history seeded the fruits of this project, and who have provided me with a constant source of strength and nurturance. I owe a debt of gratitude to my sisters and their families for their kinship and love and engaging in discussions around the work. To Dawid and Siegfried for their translation. To Janine for her willingness to listen and offer sound advice at pivotal moments. To my friends for their ardent motivation and soothing words of encouragement. And, to the literary works of V.S. Naipaul that have enabled me to explore the movement of one’s soul through the creative process. 6 Contents Chapter 1 Introduction: Locating V.S. Naipaul 8 Chapter 2 The Politics and Poetics of Writing in The Mimic Men 24 Chapter 3 Traversing the Literary: Identity and National Discourse in A Bend in the River 44 Chapter 4 Literary Traditions and Re-Writing England in The Enigma of Arrival 65 Chapter 5 On Homelessness and History: A Way in the World 86 Chapter 6 Conclusion: Naipaul’s Melancholia 112 Bibliography 120 7 ONE Introduction: Locating V.S. Naipaul It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home. (Adorno) The wanderer: He who has come only in part to a freedom of reason cannot feel on earth otherwise than as a wanderer – though not as a traveller towards a final goal, for this does not exist. But he does want to observe, and keep his eyes open for everything that actually occurs in the world; therefore he must not attach his heart too firmly to any individual thing; there must be something wandering within him, which takes its joy from change and transitoriness. (Nietzsche) Written in response to the large Jewish diaspora following Hitler’s dictatorship in Nazi Germany, Adorno’s axiom captures the zeitgeist of our current age. Displacement, migration and uprootment is the current “language of life”, and this sense of homelessness, as Stuart Hall lucidly states, “disturbs the notion that people come from originary whole cultures” (“Re-Inventing Britain” 38). The purpose of this study is two-fold. In the first place, it aims to study V.S. Naipaul’s portrayal of a rootless (exilic) condition from the perspective of his own cultural displacements and minority position (in Trinidad and subsequently in England). His ancestors travelled “the Middle Passage” as indentured labourers from India to Trinidad to work on the sugar plantations in the New World colony. In the early 1950s the young Naipaul won a scholarship to read English at Oxford University, England. Some of these details are captured in his fiction, The Mimic Men but also receive attention in his travelogues, The Middle Passage and An Area of Darkness. The second aim of this study is to consider the literary context in which Naipaul writes. Much like his central characters, Naipaul is a product of the colonial condition. His education in Trinidad (the Caribbean at large) was in English and based on a colonial British system. The impact of colonisation on the psyche of the colonial subject has been a recurrent trope in Naipaul’s oeuvre. 8 Because of the writer’s immersion in empire, his “entanglements”1 with English culture and society fed through literary ideals, his writings are deeply embedded in the British literary tradition. What is of interest, however, is how Naipaul, drawing upon his own exilic condition, engages in a revisionary practice in relation to this tradition. The methodological framework to this thesis is indebted to a body of foundational arguments posited by postcolonial theorists, such as Homi K. Bhabha, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, as well as the subsequent elaborations of these arguments by writers such as Achille Mbembe and Paul Gilroy. The postcolonial arguments germane to this study converge with postmodern critiques of Enlightenment thought around the notion of a “politics of difference”. Postcolonialism and postmodernism are both concerned with showing how the binary logic in terms of which master/slave relations and master narratives operate fall
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Psychological Study in James Joyce's Dubliners and VS
    International Conference on Shifting Paradigms in Subaltern Literature A Psychological Study in James Joyce’s Dubliners and V. S. Naipaul’s Milguel Street: A Comparative Study Dr.M.Subbiah OPEN ACCESS Director / Professor of English, BSET, Bangalore Volume : 6 James Joyce and [V]idiadhar [S] Urajprasad Naipaul are two great expatriate writers of modern times. Expatriate experience provides Special Issue : 1 creative urges to produce works of art of great power to these writers. A comparison of James Joyce and V.S. Naipaul identifies Month : September striking similarities as well as difference in perspective through the organization of narrative, the perception of individual and collective Year: 2018 Endeavour. James Joyce and V.S. Naipaul are concerned with the lives of ISSN: 2320-2645 mankind. In all their works, they write about the same thing, Joyce write great works such as Dubliners, an early part of great work, Impact Factor: 4.110 and Finnegans Wake, in which he returns to the matter of Dubliners. Similarly, Naipaul has written so many works but in his Miguel Citation: Street, he anticipated the latest autobiographical sketch Magic Seeds Subbiah, M. “A returns to the matter of Miguel Street an autobiographical fiction Psychological Study in about the life of the writer and his society. James Joyce’s Dubliners James Joyce and V.S. Naipaul are, by their own confession, and V.S.Naipaul’s committed to the people they write about. They are committed to the Milguel Street: A emergence of a new society free from external intrusion. Joyce wrote Comparative Study.” many stories defending the artistic integrity of Dubliners.
    [Show full text]
  • LYNNE MACEDO Auteur and Author: a Comparison of the Works of Alfred Hitchcock and VS Naipaul
    EnterText 1.3 LYNNE MACEDO Auteur and Author: A Comparison of the Works of Alfred Hitchcock and V. S. Naipaul At first glance, the subjects under scrutiny may appear to have little in common with each other. A great deal has been written separately about the works of both Alfred Hitchcock and V. S. Naipaul, but the objective of this article is to show how numerous parallels can be drawn between many of the recurrent ideas and issues that occur within their respective works. Whilst Naipaul refers to the cinema in many of his novels and short stories, his most sustained usage of the filmic medium is to be found in the 1971 work In a Free State. In this particular book, the films to which Naipaul makes repeated, explicit reference are primarily those of the film director Alfred Hitchcock. Furthermore, a detailed textual analysis shows that similarities exist between the thematic preoccupations that have informed the output of both men throughout much of their lengthy careers. As this article will demonstrate, the decision to contrast the works of these two men has, therefore, been far from arbitrary. Naipaul’s attraction to the world of cinema can be traced back to his childhood in Trinidad, an island where Hollywood films remained the predominant viewing fare throughout most of his formative years.1 The writer’s own comments in the “Trinidad” section of The Middle Passage bear this out: “Nearly all the films shown, apart from those in the first-run cinemas, are American and old. Favourites were shown again and Lynne Macedo: Alfred Hitchcock and V.
    [Show full text]
  • MODERN BRITISH LITERATURE (C. 1900 to 1950) READING LIST
    MODERN BRITISH LITERATURE (c. 1900 to 1950) READING LIST Please note that there are two lists below. The first is the full list with the core readings in bold; the second is the core list separated out. You are responsible for all core readings and may incorporate readings from the full list into your tailored list. Unless otherwise noted, selections separated by commas indicate all works students should know. A. FICTION Beckett, Samuel. One of the following: Murphy, Watt, Molloy Bennett, Arnold. Clayhanger Bowen, Elizabeth. The Heat of the Day Butler, Samuel. The Way of All Flesh Chesterton, G.K. The Man Who Was Thursday Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness AND one of: Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes Ford, Ford Madox. The Good Soldier Forster, E. M. Howards End, A Passage to India (plus the essays “What I Believe” and “The Challenge of Our Times” in Two Cheers for Democracy) Galsworthy, John. The Man of Property Greene, Graham. One of: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World Joyce, James. Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses Kipling, Rudyard. Kim Lawrence, D. H. Two of: Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, The Rainbow, The Plumed Serpent Lewis, Wyndham. Tarr, manifestos in BLAST 1 Mansfield, Katherine. “Prelude,” “At the Bay,” “The Garden Party,” “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” (in Collected Stories) Orwell, George. 1984 (or Aldous Huxley, Brave New World) Wells, H. G. One of the following: Ann Veronica, Tono-Bungay, The New Machiavelli West, Rebecca.
    [Show full text]
  • VS. Naipaul: a Bibliographical Update (198 7-94)
    VS. Naipaul: A Bibliographical Update (198 7-94) KELVIN JARVIS JLHIS IS A bibliographical update of my V. S. Naipaul: A Selective Bibliography with Annotations: 195J-198J, covering the period 1987-94. Since 1 g87 (when An Enigma of Arrival: A Novel in Five Sections appeared), Naipaul has published three books—A Turn in the South ( 1989), India: A Million Mutinies Now ( 1990), and A Way in the World ( 1994)—and more than 18 substantial pieces, in addition to delivering various lectures and acceptance speeches. This checklist is arranged in six parts. Part I contains Naipaul's most recent writings and comments, listed under three head• ings: published books, articles, and interviews, with entries given chronologically. Part II covers recent bibliographical listings of his work. Part III includes 16 full-length books written about him. Part PV lists articles on him in books, reference volumes, journals, and magazines. Part V has book reviews and critical studies of his individual books. And Part VI itemizes doctoral theses exclu• sively or partly on him. Conference papers have featured prominently in the spate of attention Naipaul continues to generate; these papers are usu• ally quite elusive to trace, particularly if they are not published collectively and within a reasonably short time frame. Thus this checklist omits offerings on Naipaul from conferences and all foreign-language citations. It also excludes newspaper articles with imprints prior to 1987. The Enigma of Arrival spans Naipaul's life in England and echoes a finality in his writing career. The protagonist of this novel writes: "with time passing, I felt mocked by what I had already done; it seemed to belong to a time of vigour, now past for good.
    [Show full text]
  • Post-War English Literature 1945-1990
    Post-War English Literature 1945-1990 Sara Martín Alegre P08/04540/02135 © FUOC • P08/04540/02135 Post-War English Literature 1945-1990 Index Introduction............................................................................................... 5 Objectives..................................................................................................... 7 1. Literature 1945-1990: cultural context........................................ 9 1.1. The book market in Britain ........................................................ 9 1.2. The relationship between Literature and the universities .......... 10 1.3. Adaptations of literary works for television and the cinema ...... 11 1.4. The minorities in English Literature: women and post-colonial writers .................................................................... 12 2. The English Novel 1945-1990.......................................................... 14 2.1. Traditionalism: between the past and the present ..................... 15 2.2. Fantasy, realism and experimentalism ........................................ 16 2.3. The post-modern novel .............................................................. 18 3. Drama in England 1945-1990......................................................... 21 3.1. West End theatre and the new English drama ........................... 21 3.2. Absurdist drama and social and political drama ........................ 22 3.3. New theatre companies and the Arts Council ............................ 23 3.4. Theatre from the mid-1960s onwards .......................................
    [Show full text]
  • 246 Lavinia TACHE Faculty of Letters, University Of
    Lavinia TACHE Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest Bucharest, Romania [email protected] OBJECTS RECONFIGURING THE PRESENT AND THE PRESENCE. ROUTES OF DISPLACEMENT FOR HUMANS: YOKO OGAWA, HAN KANG, OLGA TOKARCZUK Recommended Citation: Tache, Lavinia. “Objects Reconfiguring the Present and the Presence. Routes of Displacement for Humans: Yoko Ogawa, Han Kang, Olga Tokarczuk.” Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory 7.1 (2021): https://doi.org/10.24193/mjcst.2021.11.15 Abstract: The materiality of the human body is to be understood in a complementary relation with the objects that produce an extension of life and the privation of it. The Memory Police (Yoko Ogawa) and Human Acts (Han Kang) reassemble the past through the instrumentalization of objects, thus creating life in the present. The question that arises is whether this certain present can preserve the integrity of the human. Flights by Olga Tokarczuk suggests the body as a locus of conversion and tackles contemporary interests regarding plastic, for instance. These texts authored by Ogawa, Kang and Tokarczuk allow for a repositioning of the standpoint from which the consequences of subject-object relation are approached in literature, because they tap into human experience by addressing the essentiality of objects as repositories of memories. The essay attempts to analyse how objects having either a beneficial or a lethal meaning can be seen as deeply encapsulated in human existence. Keywords: memory, object-oriented theory, subject, bodies, trauma Three realities – objects for a decontextualized humanity Echoing dystopian versions of worlds about the reconfiguration of humanity, both Han Kang and Yoko Ogawa explore the idea that an object may have wide-ranging interpretations.
    [Show full text]
  • GIORGIO AGAMBEN, JM COETZEE, and KAZUO ISHIGURO a Dissertati
    THE DISCOURSE OF HUMAN DIGNITY AND TECHNIQUES OF DISEMPOWERMENT: GIORGIO AGAMBEN, J. M. COETZEE, AND KAZUO ISHIGURO A Dissertation by MALEK HARDAN MOHAMMAD Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2010 Major Subject: English The Discourse of Human Dignity and Techniques of Disempowerment: Giorgio Agamben, J. M. Coetzee, and Kazuo Ishiguro Copyright 2010 Malek Hardan Mohammad THE DISCOURSE OF HUMAN DIGNITY AND TECHNIQUES OF DISEMPOWERMENT: GIORGIO AGAMBEN, J. M. COETZEE, AND KAZUO ISHIGURO A Dissertation by MALEK HARDAN MOHAMMAD Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, David McWhirter Committee Members, Marian Eide Katherine Kelly Stjepan Mestrovic Head of Department, Jimmie Killingsworth December 2010 Major Subject: English iii ABSTRACT The Discourse of Human Dignity and Techniques of Disempowerment: Giorgio Agamben, J. M. Coetzee, and Kazuo Ishiguro. (December 2010) Malek Hardan Mohammad, B.A, University of Aleppo; M.A., Angelo State University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. David McWhirter A multidisciplinary approach is needed to critique the frequently invoked but seldom questioned notion of ―human dignity,‖ a discursive tool that is subtly serving abusive power structures while seemingly promoting human rights. The discourse of human dignity misrepresents the meaning of empowerment for modern citizens, making them interested more in political gestures and less in profit, comfort and protection from abuse. Dignity‘s epistemes— self-assertion, recognition, political action, public-spiritedness, responsibility, resistance, the denial of animal instinct, sacrifice—should not be human ideals, for they are exactly the opposite of the sovereign‘s characteristics and because they are responsible for recursive violence that preserves the status quo.
    [Show full text]
  • Nadine Gordimer, Jump and Other Stories: “The Alternate Lives I Invent” Abstracts & Bios Abstracts International Conference
    Nadine Gordimer, Jump and Other Stories: “the alternate lives I invent” Abstracts & Bios Abstracts International Conference Website: http://www.vanessaguignery.fr/ Contacts : [email protected] 4-5 October 2018 [email protected] ENS de Lyon 15 Parvis René Descartes, Site Buisson (building D8), Conference Room 1 Nadine Gordimer, Jump and Other Stories: “the alternate lives I invent” Abstracts & Biographical presentations International Conference ENS de Lyon 4-5 October 2018 15.00 • COFFEE BREAK 15.30 • Liliane LOUVEL (University of Poitiers) : “‘The Enigma of the Encoun- — PROGRAMME — ter’: a World out of Joint in Nadine Gordimer’s Jump and Other Stories” 16.05 • Hubert MALFRAY (Lycée Claude-Fauriel Saint Etienne - IHRIM): “Traces, Nadine Gordimer, Jump and Other Stories: Tracks and Trails: Hunting for Sense in Nadine Gordimer’s Jump and Other “the alternate lives I invent” Stories” 16.40 • Fiona McCANN (University of Lille): “A Poetics of Liminality: Nadine ENS DE LYON - SITE BUISSON (BUILDING D8), CONFERENCE ROOM 1 Gordimer’s Jump and Other Stories” 20.00 • DINNER THURSDAY 4th OCTOBER 2018 FRIDAY 5th OCTOBER 2018 09.30 • Registration and coffee MORNING SESSION 09.50 • Welcome address by Vanessa GUIGNERY (ENS de Lyon) and Christian GUTLEBEN (University of Nice — Sophia Antipolis) Chair: Pascale TOLLANCE (University Lyon 2) 09.30 • Christian GUTLEBEN (University of Nice — Sophia Antipolis): MORNING SESSION “Metonymy Thwarted: When the Part is Segregated from the Whole in Nadine Gordimer’s Jump and Other Stories” Chair:
    [Show full text]
  • Reseña De" Naipaul: Man and Writer" De Gillian Dooley
    Caribbean Studies ISSN: 0008-6533 [email protected] Instituto de Estudios del Caribe Puerto Rico Fraser, Peter D. Reseña de "Naipaul: Man and Writer" de Gillian Dooley Caribbean Studies, vol. 38, núm. 1, enero-junio, 2010, pp. 212-215 Instituto de Estudios del Caribe San Juan, Puerto Rico Disponible en: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=39220687019 Cómo citar el artículo Número completo Sistema de Información Científica Más información del artículo Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal Página de la revista en redalyc.org Proyecto académico sin fines de lucro, desarrollado bajo la iniciativa de acceso abierto 212 PEDRO L. SAN MIGUEL Tal transposición respondió en buena medida a una concepción raciali- zada de la historia según la cual los esclavos de Haití, por ser negros y de origen africano, no po dían representar ideales tan magnos como la Libertad y la Historia Universal—así, con mayúscula. No empece su crítica profunda a la construcción hegeliana de la “historia universal”, Buck-Morss está lejos de repudiar tal concepto. Al contrario, en el segundo ensayo que compone su libro, titulado precisamente “Universal History”, la autora reclama la necesidad de recuperarlo, si bien transformándolo de manera que Occidente no sea concebido como el eje único y absoluto de una historia universal. De con- cretarse su llamado a radicalizar el concepto de la “historia universal”, la historia de Haití y de los esclavos que lucharon por la libertad—por la de ellos, sin duda, pero metafóricamente también por la de muchos otros humanos—jugaría, seguramente, no el papel marginal que ha ocupado hasta ahora en los relatos históricos, sino un papel central y determi- nante.
    [Show full text]
  • V.S. Naipaul: from Gadfly to Obsessive
    V.S. Naipaul: From Gadfly to Obsessive Mohamed Bakari* All the examples Naipaul gives, all the people he speaks to tend to align themselves under the Islam versus the West opposition he is determined to find everywhere. It is all tiresome and repetitious. Edward W.Said The Man and the Prize : The announcement of the 2001 Nobel Laureate for Literature in October that year elicited the kind of reaction that was predictable, given the reputation and the choice, that of Sir Vidhiadar Surajparasad Naipaul. Of Indian ancestry, V.S. Naipaul is a grandchild of Hindu Brahmins who found their way to the Caribbean island of Trinidad as indentured labourers to escape the grinding poverty of Utterpradesh. Naipaul’s was just one of a stream of families that were encouraged to migrate to the West Indies from the former British colonies of India and Chinese enclaves in Mainland China. Slavery had been abolished in the British Empire in 1832 and the former African slaves were no longer available to the sugarcane plantations and labour had to be sought from somewhere. In their natural ingenuity the British devised the new institution of indentured labour, which was really a new euphemism for a new form of servitude. Whereas the slaves were forcibly repatriated against their will, the new indentured labourers had the carrot of landownership dangled in front of them, to lure them to places they had no idea of. The new immigrants added a new dimension to an already complex racial situation, by adding the Asian layer to the Carib, European and African admixtures created by Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, Vol.2, No.3&4, Fall&Winter 2003 243 waves of migration.
    [Show full text]
  • Introductory Discussions on the Novel, “A Bend in the River”
    Compiled and Circulated by Samir Kuilya,Faculty Member,Dept. of English, Narajole Raj College =================================== Introductory Discussions on The Novel, “A Bend in the River” Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1932–2018), publicly known as V. S. Naipaul, was a British-Trinidadian writer of Indian descent. He was best known for writing pessimistic novels and travel accounts of the developing world. Naipaul was born and brought up on the island of Trinidad, located in the Caribbean Sea off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. His grandparents started to live in Trinidad in the nineteenth century as contractual servants. He secured free passage from India in exchange for a set period of labour on one of the island’s plantations. In 1950, Naipaul received a scholarship to study in England, and he chose to attend Oxford University. Following the completion of his studies there, he settled in London. He immediately began a long and productive writing career that spanned five decades and saw the publication of fourteen novels and sixteen works of nonfiction. Naipaul received numberless high honours for his work, including the prestigious Booker Prize for his 1971 novel In a Free State and a knighthood in 1989. In 2001, the Swedish Academy awarded Naipaul the Nobel Prize in Literature, praising the “vigilant style” of his prose and his commitment to unveiling the hidden “history of the anquished.” In A Bend in the River (1979), Naipaul’s exploration of alienation and dislocation takes on special complexity as the ethnically Indian protagonist must navigate two separate but connected forms of colonization: that of the British Empire, which dominated East Africa throughout his childhood, and that of an emerging African regime, which sees everything of foreign origin as a threat to African independence.
    [Show full text]
  • Contemporaneity and VS Naipaul's a Bend in the River
    Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 46.2 September 2020: 247-267 DOI: 10.6240/concentric.lit.202009_46(2).0011 Inscribing African History: Contemporaneity and V. S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River Dexu Zhang Department of English Northeastern University, China Abstract This article proposes a thesis that goes against the negativity of the prevalent assessment of Naipaul’s work: that his literary project partakes in writing third-world history and reconstructing humanism of the global south. In his transnational novels especially, Naipaul often mobilizes contemporaneity as a vehicle to challenge hegemonic European time, and accordingly calls for a new form of rewriting (post-)imperial history. In light of the notion of time and contemporaneity, I read A Bend in the River (1979) as Naipaul’s attempt to write a post-Orientalist history of Africa that refuses to be historicized as the West’s Other. Contrary to the popular view that Naipaul consigns Africa to a primitive time zone, this novel enacts an indigenous temporality in parallel with European time which denies that Africa is Europe’s contemporary, unravelling their fundamental coevalness. Through a vivid depiction of (non-)interactions between characters, Naipaul uses literary realism to attempt historiography in African terms, one that contests and expands the way we think and imagine African history. Keywords African history, historiography, time, contemporaneity, A Bend in the River, Naipaul I would like to acknowledge the valuable suggestions made by the two anonymous readers and the editors. My thanks also go to Gaurav Desai and Grant Hamilton for their incisive comments on earlier drafts of this article.
    [Show full text]