La Literatura De Singapur: Identidad Y Tradición En La Obra De Catherine Lim

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

La Literatura De Singapur: Identidad Y Tradición En La Obra De Catherine Lim Curso 2011/12 HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS SOCIALES/4 I.S.B.N.: 978-84-15287-97-1 MARÍA CONCEPCIÓN BRITO VERA La literatura de Singapur: identidad y tradición en la obra de Catherine Lim Director JUAN IGNACIO OLIVA CRUZ SOPORTES AUDIOVISUALES E INFORMÁTICOS Serie Tesis Doctorales humanidades 04 (María Concepción Brito Vera).indd 1 13/05/2013 10:17:23 what we have left behind us in the fathering clay the finishing bed where the veins flow grey in the grave unequivocal, is little, redundancy. Gwendolyn MacEwen I have also wondered... when the postcolonial is supposed to end. First we were colonials and now we seem to be postcolonials. So is the colonial the new Anno Domini from which events are to be everlastingly measured? Sahgal (cit. Dixon 2002: 1) A mis padres Manuel José y Sara Me dieron la llave A mis hijos Enzo y Guillermo La llevan Agradecimientos Durante los años de investigación que he dedicado a este trabajo, aquellas personas, amigos y familiares que han soportado mi humor y me han ayudado a continuar, han colaborado de manera inequívoca, aun sin saberlo, en la elaboración de esta tesis doctoral. A todos, y en especial a mis hijos, mis sinceras disculpas y mi más profundo agradecimiento. Quisiera agradecer en singular a las personas que se vieron involucradas de manera más directa en este proceso: A Lourdes Divasson y a Isabel León, compañeras, amigas queridas, que han hecho posible este trabajo. La paciencia, dedicación y prudencia de Lourdes y el apoyo optimista de Lis han sido esenciales para terminarlo. A Alberto G. Quesada, cuyas discusiones y aportaciones han nutrido muchos aspectos de esta investigación. A Jorge Berástegui, marinero de similar singladura, por los mutuos alientos que nos impulsan. A mi hermana María del Mar, que encontró tiempo para recordarme las normas de la Academia y me dio su apoyo moral en los momentos de duda; a Ana María, mi otra hermana, que ha aguantado estoicamente muchos monólogos sobre literatura postcolonial. A Rafael García, mi marido y compañero, que además de ocuparse del diseño, corrección y formato del trabajo, ha hecho casi imperceptible mi abstracción del hogar; sus noches frente al ordenador, revisando estas páginas, han contribuido sensiblemente a la forma final de esta tesis, que, indudablemente, es también suya; a Toño, a Gavi y a Vike, que le aportaron conocimientos y su inestimable ayuda. A Jordi e Isabel y a El Güell, que serenaron mi espíritu cuando fue necesario. Agradezco a Paco Cortés y a Tomás Monterrey las alas que me dieron. Y a Juan Ignacio Oliva, que me hizo creer que una tesis se podía elaborar en un año y con esa argucia me embarcó en este fascinante viaje. Sus consejos y su cariño han sido imprescindibles. Gracias a todos. Índice Capítulo 0. Introducción_________________________________________________________ 15 Parte I. La Identidad ___________________________________________________________ 27 Capítulo 1 . Historia y cultura de Singapur ___________________________________________ 31 1.1. MOMENTOS HISTÓRICOS RELEVANTES ______________________________________________ 31 1.2. SINGAPUR EN LA ACTUALIDAD ___________________________________________________ 39 1.2.1. Modernidad y progreso ________________________________________________ 39 1.2.2. Creación de una identidad singapurense ___________________________________ 44 1.3. LITERATURA ________________________________________________________________ 50 1.3.1. La literatura de los años 90 en adelante ___________________________________ 53 1.3.2. Catherine Lim en el horizonte literario singapurense _________________________ 57 1.4. SINOPSIS DE LAS OBRAS DE FICCIÓN ________________________________________________ 63 1.4.1. Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore (1978) ___________________________________ 63 1.4.2. Or Else the Lightning God and Other Stories (1980) __________________________ 64 1.4.3. The Serpent´s Tooth (1982) _____________________________________________ 65 1.4.4. They Do Return (1983) _________________________________________________ 67 1.4.5. The Shadow of a Shadow of a Dream: Love Stories of Singapore (1987) __________ 68 1.4.6. Oh Singapore! Stories in Celebration (Satirical Stories of Singapore) (1989) _______ 69 1.4.7. Deadline for Love and Other Stories (1992) _________________________________ 70 1.4.8. The Woman´s Book of Superlatives (1993) _________________________________ 71 1.4.9. Meet Me on the Queen Elizabeth 2! (1993) ________________________________ 72 1.4.10. The Bondmaid (1995) _________________________________________________ 72 1.4.11. The Teardrop Story Woman (1998) ______________________________________ 75 1.4.12. The Howling Silence. Tales of the Dead and Their Return (1999) _______________ 77 1.4.13. Following the Wrong God Home (2001) __________________________________ 78 1.4.14. The Song of Silver Frond (2003) _________________________________________ 80 1.4.15. A Leap of Love. A Novella (2003) ________________________________________ 82 1.4.16. Unhurried Thoughts at My Funeral (2005) ________________________________ 83 1.4.17. Miss Seetoh in the World (2010) ________________________________________ 84 11 Capítulo 2. Un Pasado siempre presente ___________________________________________ 85 2.1. LA VUELTA AL PASADO COMO INTENTO DE REGISTRO PARA LA MEMORIA ______________________ 88 2.2. LA VUELTA AL PASADO COMO EXPRESIÓN DEL SENTIMIENTO DE CULPA EN EL SUJETO COLONIZADO ____ 105 2.3. EL PASADO Y LA CULPA EN LA OBRA DE CATHERINE LIM _________________________________ 118 2.4. FINALES TRÁGICOS : DESAFÍO , CULPA Y RESTABLECIMIENTO DEL ORDEN _______________________ 135 Capítulo 3. Oriente y Occidente. Exotismo y estereotipos coloniales _____________________ 147 3.1. REFLEXIONES SOBRE LO EXÓTICO ________________________________________________ 147 3.2. EL EXOTISMO COMO FANTASÍA : VICTOR SEGALEN Y EL ESSAI SUR L ´EXOTISME __________________ 155 3.3. EDWARD SAID Y LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE LO EXÓTICO ___________________________________ 166 3.3.1. El conocimiento en el discurso orientalista ________________________________ 167 3.3.2. El problema de la representación _______________________________________ 169 3.4. EL ESTEREOTIPO DE HOMI BHABHA ______________________________________________ 177 3.5. LA VISIÓN DE OCCIDENTE Y ORIENTE EN LA OBRA DE CATHERINE LIM _______________________ 185 3.5.1. Occidente exótico. Representaciones de Occidente _________________________ 186 3.5.2. Oriente exótico: autoexotismo o la “agencia” por la pasividad ________________ 209 Parte II. El Género ____________________________________________________________ 227 Capítulo 4. Formas de Subordinación ____________________________________________ 231 4.1. MODOS DE SUBORDINACIÓN __________________________________________________ 233 4.2. LA INFANCIA Y LA EDUCACIÓN __________________________________________________ 236 4.3. LA ADOLESCENCIA __________________________________________________________ 242 4.4. MUJER Y MATRIMONIO ______________________________________________________ 245 4.5. MUJER Y RELIGIÓN _________________________________________________________ 256 Capítulo 5. Teoría y práctica. Catherine Lim y el feminismo occidental____________________ 271 5.1. “T RANSIT TO HEAVEN ” O LOS LÍMITES DE LA TEORÍA ___________________________________ 272 5.2. MOHANTY Y LA MUJER DEL TERCER MUNDO _________________________________________ 278 5.3. LA CRÍTICA POSTCOLONIAL DE SPIVAK _____________________________________________ 285 5.4. EJEMPLOS DE “SUBALTERNIDAD ” EN LA OBRA DE CATHERINE LIM __________________________ 302 12 Capítulo 6. Nacionalismo y feminismo: dos lealtades contrapuestas _____________________ 321 6.1. FANON : LA NEGRA QUE QUIERE SER BLANCA Y LA ANSIEDAD NACIONALISTA ____________________ 322 6.2. NANDY , LA CULTURA Y LA MUJER ________________________________________________ 328 6.3. EL NACIONALISMO “FEMENINO ” DE GANDHI ________________________________________ 332 6.4. FEMINISMO EN SINGAPUR _____________________________________________________ 336 6.4.1. El estado y la mujer como máquina de producción física y simbólica ___________ 349 6.4.2. Historia de AWARE: control estatal y posibilidades de expresión de los movimientos feministas ________________________________________________________________ 356 6.5. CATHERINE LIM Y SU RELACIÓN CON EL NACIONALISMO SINGAPURENSE _______________________ 362 6.5.1. El caso Catherine Lim _________________________________________________ 364 6.5.2. Un nuevo marco para interpretar la obra de Catherine Lim ___________________ 372 6.5.3. Catherine Lim: puntos de encuentro con otras escritoras postcoloniales ________ 384 Capítulo 7. Conclusiones_______________________________________________________ 389 Capítulo 8. Bibliografía ________________________________________________________ 409 8.1. BIBLIOGRAFÍA DE CATHERINE LIM ________________________________________________ 409 8.1.1. Bibliografía primaria _________________________________________________ 409 8.1.2. Bibliografía secundaria ________________________________________________ 410 8.2. BIBLIOGRAFÍA GENERAL _______________________________________________________ 411 8.2.1. Bibliografía primaria _________________________________________________ 411 8.2.2. Bibliografía secundaria ________________________________________________ 414 13 Índice de iIlustraciones PORTADAS DE LAS EDICIONES DE SUS OBRAS : LITTLE IRONIES : STORIES OF SINGAPORE --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 58 OR ELSE THE LIGHTNING GOD AND OTHER STORIES -------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended publications
  • Ultranationalism: a Proposal for a Quiet Withdrawal
    I developed an early suspicion of any form of nationalism courtesy of a geography teacher and an imaginary cricket game. As the only student of Chinese origin in a high school in Bangalore, I was asked by my teacher in a benign voice who I would support if India and China played a match. Aside from the ridiculousness of the question 01/05 (China does not even play cricket), the dubious intent behind it was rather clear, even to a teenager. Still, I dutifully replied, “Sir, I will support India,” for which I received a gratified smile and a pat on the head. I was offended less by the crude attempt by someone in power to force a kid to prove his patriotism, than by the outright silliness of the game. If all it took to Lawrence Liang establish the euphoric security of nationalism was that simple answer, I figured there must be something drastically wrong with the question. I Ultranationalism: was left, however, with an uneasy feeling (one that has persisted through the years), not A Proposal for a because I had given a false answer but because I had been forced to answer a false question. The Quiet answer made pragmatic sense in a schoolboy way (you don’t want to piss off someone who is going to be marking your papers), and I hadn’t Withdrawal read King Lear yet to know that the only appropriate response to the question should have been silence. If Cordelia refuses to participate in Lear’s competition of affective intimacy, it is not just the truth, but also the distasteful aesthetics of her sister’s excessive declarations of love, that motivates her withdrawal into silence.
    [Show full text]
  • Reconsidering Solidarity with Leela Gandhi and Judith Butler
    Europe’s Crisis: Reconsidering Solidarity with Leela Gandhi and Judith Butler Giovanna Covi for William V. Spanos, who has shown the way The idea called Europe is important. It deserves loving and nourishing care to grow well and to return its promise. It is a visionary idea shared by winners and losers of World War II, by survivors of the Nazi-Fascist regimes and the Shoah, by large and small countries. It is still little more than just an idea: so far, it has only yielded the suspension of inner wars among the states that became members of the European Union. It is only a germ. Yet, its achievement is outstanding: in the face of the incessant proliferation of wars around the globe, it has secured lasting peace to an increasing number of nations since the 1950s. The idea called Europe is also vague. It has pursued its aim of ending the frequent and bloody wars between neighbours mainly through economic ties, as the Treaty of Maastricht’s failure to promote shared policies underscores. For over half a century, its common policies have been manifestly insufficient and inadequate. It is indeed still only a germ. And its limitations are tremendous: in the face of the rising threats to its own idea of peaceful cohabitation, of the internal rise of violent and hateful forces of sovereignty, of policies of domination, discrimination and exclusion, it is incapable of keeping Europe’s own promise. Such limitations are tangible in the debate about Grexit and the decision regarding Brexit, as well as in the political turn towards totalitarianisms in multiple states.
    [Show full text]
  • The Futility of Violence I. Gandhi's Critique of Violence for Gandhi, Political
    CHAPTER ONE The Futility of Violence I. Gandhi’s Critique of Violence For Gandhi, political life was, in a profound and fundamental sense, closely bound to the problem of violence. At the same time, his understanding and critique of violence was multiform and layered; violence’s sources and consequences were at once ontological, moral and ethical, as well as distinctly political. Gandhi held a metaphysical account of the world – one broadly drawn from Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist philosophy – that accepted himsa or violence to be an ever-present and unavoidable fact of human existence. The world, he noted, was “bound in a chain of destruction;” the basic mechanisms for the reproduction of biological and social life necessarily involved continuous injury to living matter. But modern civilization – its economic and political institutions as well as the habits it promoted and legitimated – posed the problem of violence in new and insistent terms. Gandhi famously declared the modern state to represent “violence in a concentrated and organized form;” it was a “soulless machine” that – like industrial capitalism – was premised upon and generated coercive forms of centralization and hierarchy.1 These institutions enforced obedience through the threat of violence, they forced people to labor unequally, they oriented desires towards competitive material pursuits. In his view, civilization was rendering persons increasingly weak, passive, and servile; in impinging upon moral personality, modern life degraded and deformed it. This was the structural violence of modernity, a violence that threatened bodily integrity but also human dignity, individuality, and autonomy. In this respect, Gandhi’s deepest ethical objection to violence was closely tied to a worldview that took violence to inhere in modern modes of politics and modern ways of living.
    [Show full text]
  • World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics
    W!"#$ L%&'"(&)"' *!" &+' W"'&,+'$ !* &+' E("&+ Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics -. $(.%'# '#(/ Fordham University Press .'0 1!"2 3435 Copyright © 3435 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Visit us online at www.fordhampress.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available online at https:// catalog.loc.gov. Printed in the United States of America 36 33 35 7 8 6 3 5 First edition C!"#$"#% Preface vi Introduction: Impossible Subjects & Lala Har Dayal’s Imagination &' B. R. Ambedkar’s Sciences (( M. K. Gandhi’s Lost Debates )* Bhagat Singh’s Jail Notebook '+ Epilogue: Stopping and Leaving &&, Acknowledgments &,& Notes &,- Bibliography &)' Index &.' P!"#$%" In &'(&, S. R. Ranganathan, an unknown literary scholar and statistician from India, published a curious manifesto: ! e Five Laws of Library Sci- ence. ) e manifesto, written shortly a* er Ranganathan’s return to India from London—where he learned to despise, among other things, the Dewey decimal system and British bureaucracy—argues for reorganiz- ing Indian libraries.
    [Show full text]
  • Tanmayee BANERJEE 2014.Pdf
    WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/westminsterresearch Nationalism and internationalism in selected Indian English novels: 1909 – 1930 Tanmayee Banerjee School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © The Author, 2014. This is an exact reproduction of the paper copy held by the University of Westminster library. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Users are permitted to download and/or print one copy for non-commercial private study or research. Further distribution and any use of material from within this archive for profit-making enterprises or for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: (http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] Nationalism and Internationalism in Selected Indian English Novels: 1909 – 1930 Tanmayee Banerjee A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages University of Westminster April 2014 Affirmation Herewith I declare that the work submitted is my own. Appropriate credit has been given to thoughts that were taken directly or indirectly from other sources. -- Tanmayee Banerjee Acknowledgements I owe my sincerest gratitude to all the institutions, organizations and individuals who have been directly and indirectly involved in this project.
    [Show full text]
  • 173 Labirinti.Pdf
    ! ! Labirinti 173 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! COMITATO SCIENTIFICO Pietro Taravacci (coordinatore) Università degli Studi di Trento Andrea Comboni Università degli Studi di Trento Caterina Mordeglia Università degli Studi di Trento Paolo Tamassia Università degli Studi di Trento Il presente volume è stato sottoposto a procedimento di peer review. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !Collana Labirinti n. 173 Direttore:! Pietro Taravacci Segreteria di redazione: Lia Coen © Università degli Studi di Trento-Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia Via Tommaso Gar 14 - 38122 TRENTO Tel. 0461-281722 - Fax 0461 281751 http://www.unitn.it/lettere/14963/collana-labirinti e-mail: [email protected] ISBN 978-88-8443-794-5 Finito di stampare nel mese di aprile 2018 MITOGRAFIE E MITOCRAZIE NELL’EUROPA MODERNA a cura di Andrea Binelli e Fulvio Ferrari Università degli Studi di Trento Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia SOMMARIO Introduzione 7 ISABELLA MATTAZZI, Scatole vuote. La riscrittura letteraria come dispositivo mitopoietico 13 ALESSANDRO FAMBRINI, La tenebra primordiale del mondo. La riscrittura del mito alla luce della scienza nella letteratura del fin de siècle 27 ANDREA BINELLI, Irish Revival (1892-1922): una sta- gione di miti fra modernità alternativa e resistenza 41 SERGIO SCARTOZZI, La luce, la tenebra, gli abissi astrali. Poiesi e mitopoiesi nel «primo Onofri» (1906-1912) 65 FULVIO FERRARI, Mito contro mito: la rilettura della conversione dell’Islanda nella cultura nazionalista tedesca tra Otto e Novecento 101 ENRICO MANERA, Nei cantieri di Kaisersaschern. Ap- punti sulla religio mortis nella mitocritica di Furio Jesi 133 ALESSIO PANICHI, Demitizzare la lotta politica. Fiducia nella ragione e senso della storia nei Cattivi pensieri di Luigi Firpo 161 GIOVANNA COVI, Immergersi senza «il libro dei miti».
    [Show full text]
  • © 2017 Irina Spector-Marks
    © 2017 Irina Spector-Marks CIRCUITS OF IMPERIAL CITIZENSHIP: INDIAN PRINT CULTURE AND THE POLITICS OF RACE, 1890-1914 BY IRINA SPECTOR-MARKS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Antoinette Burton, Chair Associate Professor Teresa Barnes Associate Professor James Brennan Professor Isabel Hofmeyr, University of Witswatersand Associate Professor Dana Rabin Abstract At the turn of the twentieth century, Indian immigrants throughout the British empire faced a rise in discriminatory legislation. They responded by asserting that as imperial citizens, Indians should be treated equally with white British subjects. Although imperial citizenship had no fixed legal meaning, Indian activists invoked imperial citizenship as a legal status and as an identity that carried racial and civilizational overtones. Through a close reading of iterations of imperial citizenship across a wide range of print culture sources, I show how imperial citizenship, although ostensibly race-blind, was an implicitly racialized discourse. Based on research from archives in Ottawa, Vancouver, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Pretoria, and London, I map how the discourse of imperial citizenship circulated across the empire in a transnational print sphere of periodicals, pamphlets, and petitions. By focusing on the work of activists in Canada and South Africa, I explore the ways in which local political and racial contexts precluded the potential for material forms of transnational collaboration. My dissertation nuances the “transnational turn” in the humanities by emphasizing the role of local factors in shaping larger global politics.
    [Show full text]
  • The Indian Empire and Its Colonial Practices in South Asia
    CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 19 (2017) Issue 2 Article 2 The Indian Empire and its Colonial Practices in South Asia Yubraj Aryal University of Montreal Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the American Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Education Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Rhetoric and Composition Commons, Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, Television Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Aryal, Yubraj.
    [Show full text]
  • In Yohanan Friedmann (Ed.), Islam in Asia, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984), P
    Notes INTRODUCTION: AFGHANISTAN’S ISLAM 1. Cited in C. Edmund Bosworth, “The Coming of Islam to Afghanistan,” in Yohanan Friedmann (ed.), Islam in Asia, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984), p. 13. 2. Erica C. D. Hunter, “The Church of the East in Central Asia,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 78 (1996), pp. 129–42. On Herat, see pp. 131–34. 3. On Afghanistan’s Jews, see the discussion and sources later in this chapter and notes 163 to 169. 4. Bosworth (1984; above, note 1), pp. 1–22; idem, “The Appearance and Establishment of Islam in Afghanistan,” in Étienne de la Vaissière (ed.), Islamisation de l’Asie Centrale: Processus locaux d’acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle, Cahiers de Studia Iranica 39 (Paris: Association pour l’Avancement des Études Iraniennes, 2008); and Gianroberto Scarcia, “Sull’ultima ‘islamizzazione’ di Bāmiyān,” Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, new series, 16 (1966), pp. 279–81. On the early Arabic sources on Balkh, see Paul Schwarz, “Bemerkungen zu den arabischen Nachrichten über Balkh,” in Jal Dastur Cursetji Pavry (ed.), Oriental Studies in Honour of Cursetji Erachji Pavry (London: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1933). 5. Hugh Kennedy and Arezou Azad, “The Coming of Islam to Balkh,” in Marie Legen- dre, Alain Delattre, and Petra Sijpesteijn (eds.), Authority and Control in the Countryside: Late Antiquity and Early Islam (London: Darwin Press, forthcoming). 6. For example, Geoffrey Khan (ed.), Arabic Documents from Early Islamic Khurasan (London: Nour Foundation/Azimuth Editions, 2007). 7. Richard W. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quan- titative History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); Derryl Maclean, Re- ligion and Society in Arab Sind (Leiden: Brill, 1989); idem, “Ismailism, Conversion, and Syncretism in Arab Sind,” Bulletin of the Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies 11 (1992), pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Paper 28 the History of the Indian Subcontinent From
    PAPER 28 THE HISTORY OF THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT FROM THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY Convenors: Dr Shruti Kapila, [email protected] Dr Anjali B. Datta [email protected] Professor Samita Sen [email protected] The Hindu, Independence Day cover, 15 August 1947, Centre of South Asian Studies Archive 1 READING LIST: 2020-21 The History of The Indian Subcontinent from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Present Day Course description A fifth of the world's population lives in the Indian subcontinent. While today the region’s place in the global world order is widely recognised, this is in fact only the most recent chapter in a longer history. This paper offers an understanding of the part played by the Indian subcontinent and its people in the making of the modern world. From the decline of the great empire of the Mughals and the rise of British hegemony, to the rise of nationalism, the coming of independence and partition, the consolidation of new nation states despite regional wars and conflicts, and the emergence of India as the largest democracy in the world, this paper is a comprehensive and analytical survey of the subcontinent's modern history. The paper covers the dynamic and complex relationships between changing forms of political power and religious identities, economic transformations, and social and cultural change in the period from 1757 to 2007. Teaching There will be 30 lectures, 4 revision classes in the Easter Term. Supervisions will be centrally arranged by the convenors and students will be informed directly.
    [Show full text]
  • Fernando Pessoa As English Reader and Writer
    STEFAN HELGESSON Pessoa, Anon, and the Natal Colony Retracing an Imperial Matrix abstract: Fernando Pessoa’s years in Durban (1896-1905) have often been side- lined by critics. Conversely, the memory and reception of Pessoa in South Africa have been slight, sustained by only a few individuals. By contextualizing Pessoa’s place- ment in the historically peculiar Natal Colony, and by reading some early work by Pessoa's English literary persona Charles Robert Anon against the backdrop of the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), this article adds to the emergent understanding of the Durban years as deeply formative for Pessoa's work. It is here, not least, that we can trace the early formation of the imperial view of history that also becomes a strange limitation to his thinking.The “empire" as a frame of reference, an object of desire, a cause for ridicule, and a lofty ideal, recurs repeatedly in Pessoa’s writing, and even when Anon expresses severe criticism of British imperial conduct, he re- mains beholden to an imperial optic, almost by default restricted to a white outlook on events in southern Africa. We find thereby in the early work the makings of an imperial ambivalence that is then dispersed and refracted through multiple poetic voices in Pessoa’s oeuvre. keywords: Fernando Pessoa, Charles Robert Anon, Roy Campbell, Natal Colony, Anglo-Boer War, imperialism This article is written under the shadow of a double elusiveness. One concerns the traces of Fernando Pessoa in South Africa, the other the traces of South Af- rica in Fernando Pessoa. To what extent, we must ask ourselves, do the two cross paths in a meaningful way? The external facts are familiar enough: after his mother remarried, Pessoa’s family settled in Durban, where his stepfather worked in the Portuguese consu- late.
    [Show full text]
  • Contemporary Portrayals of Women by Women: Comparing India and Ghana
    Contemporary Portrayals of Women by Women: Comparing India and Ghana Florence D’Souza Charles de Gaulle University – University of Lille 3 A comparative analysis of the representation of the exiled female body in the Ghanaian Amma Darko’s Faceless, and the Indian Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things reveals similar brutal means of control over women’s sexual freedom, without erasing sociological differences like the influence of superstitions and curses in Ghana, and the internal policing of caste hierarchies in India. A study of linguistic hybridity in Manju Kapur of India’s Difficult Daughters and Ama Ata Aidoo of Ghana’s Changes: a love story, shows the complexities of expressing local specificities in the ex-coloniser’s language for reasons of worldwide accessibility. A close look at cultural hybridity, or the juxtaposing of allusions to Western culture with non-Western cultural practices, highlights harmonious religious overlappings as well as religious conflicts resulting from the multiple religious practices in Ghana and in India. Instances of cultural hybridity also demonstrate the particular cultural richness, although not identical in Aidoo’s and in Kapur’s novels, engendered by the simultaneous deployment of Western and non-Western cultural references. This comparative study, therefore, underlines cultural and contextual specificities, in an attempt to avoid unjustified homogenisations or isolated nationalist essentialisations of these four coloured postcolonial women’s texts. The texts I have selected for study here are by women authors from Ghana and from India. The choice of India perhaps does not need justification since I am of Indian origin, and the writings of postcolonial Indian authors are familiar to me.
    [Show full text]