ISSN: 0252-8169 JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS Vol. XXIV: Nos. 1-2: 2001 A VISHVANATHA KAVIRAJA INSTITUTE PUBLICATION Editor: A.C. SUKLA B-8, Sambalpur University, Jyoti Vihar, Orissa India-768019. Fax-0663+430314, Fax:0663+431915 E.Mail: [email protected] Editorial Advisor Milton H. Snoeyenbos Department of Philosophy Georgia State University Atlanta: Georgia 30303, U.S.A. Editorial Board John Hospers University of Southern California W.J.T. Mitchel University of Chicago Ralph Chohen University of Virginia Philip Alperson Temple University Peter Lamarque University of Hull Denis Dutton University of Canterbury Michael H. Mitias Kuwait University Grazia Marchiano University of Siena V.K. Chari Carleton University S.K. Saxena University of Delhi Goran Hermeren University of Lund Patric Thomas City University of New York E.S. Shaffer University of London Managing Editor Sanjay Sarangi Computer Typography D. Lokanath Dora [email protected] All subscriptions / books for review / papers / reviews / notes for publication are to be sent to the Editor JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS Volume: XXIV: Nos. 1-2: 2001 A VISHVANATHA KAVIRAJA INSTITUTE PUBLICATION The present volume felicitates the 83 rd Birth Day of Professor John Hospers This Present Volume is funded by Prof. Milton H. Snoeyenbos CONTENTS Uppinder S. Mehan 1-13 Transgressing Bodies in Postcolonial Fiction Kenneth Asher 15-25 The Lawrentian Vision of Martin Amis’ London Fields. Marie-France Hilgar 27-32 The Peregrinations of Saint Mary of Magdalen Helen F. Maxson 33-43 Wallace Stevens’s “Necessary Angel of Earth” at Work in Three Paintings. M.Dasan 45-53 The Poetry of Re(z)sisters: First Nations Women and Stri Dalit Poetry: A comparison. Lorna Fitzsimmons 55-60 Artistic Subjectivity in Nabokov’s The Defense and Invitation to a Beheading. Martin Wasserman 61-74 Kafka’s “The New Attorney”: A Therapeutic Poem Offering a Jewish Way to Face Death. Ranjan Ghosh 75-88 Towards a Concept of the Poet in the Vedic Aesthetics. Wolfgang Ruttkowski 89-125 “East and West” and the Concept of Literature. Book Reviews by: Michael H. Mitias, A.C. Sukla, B.C. Dash, Sanjay Sarangi, K.C. Dash. Books Received John Hosper BOOK REVIEWS 1. Ananta Ch. Sukla, Art and Representation: Contributions to Contemporary Aesthetics, Westport (Connecticut), Praeger Publishers (Greenwood Publishing Group Inc.), 2001, pp.282. 2. S.K. Saxena, Hindustani Sangeet and a Philosopher of Art: Music, Rhythm and Kathak Dance vis-ā-vis Aesthetics of Susanne K. Langer, Delhi: D.K. Printworld (P) Ltd., 2001, pp.383. 3. Shrikrishna (Babanrao) Haldankar, Aesthetics of Agra and Jaipur Traditions (ranslated by Padmaja Punde and the Author), Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 2001, pp.139. 4. Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge: The University Press, 2000, pp.312. 5. Dipesh Chakraborty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, pp.301. 6. Michael P. Clark (Ed.) Revenge of the Aesthetic: The Place of Literature in Theory Today, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, pp.251. 7. Jean-Marie Schaefler, Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger (Translated by Steven Rendall), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, pp.352. ************** Transgressing Bodies in Postcolonial Fiction - UPPINDER S. MEHAN Thus because of the "Indian Wonders" the eyes and imagination of medieval man were accustomed to grotesque body. Both in literatme _ and pictorial art, the body of mixed parts and the s.trangest anatomical fantasies, the free play with the human limbs and interior organs were unfolded before him. The transgression of the limits dividing the body from the world also became customary. (Bakhtin 347) Issues of control and transgression are central to the question of social praxis. That "deviant" sex and the grotesque body are the preferred symbols of transgression is "natural", given the attempts to legislate both through legal and normative means.. Cultural critics have underscored the usage of. deviancy (variously defint;c\, butcomm~mly against an assumed homogeneous bourgeois norm) in contemporary film and music to protest middle- class values. Similarly, literary critics have made salient the figure of the sexual/class! gender/racial transgressor in literature by focusing on the marginal and the grotesque. My focus in this paper is on the inappropriate use of the body and sexuality as symbols pf transgression in postcolonial fiction. Through a case study ofMulk Raj Anand.s first novel Untouchable and his latest novel The Bubble, I ask for a more considered approach to the use of the transgressive body in critiques of postcolonial texts. The western trained lit~rary critic interested in exploring issues of the body and transgression in postcolonialljteraturesl , all too often, hastily and mistakenly transfers the equation of "grotesque is to creative texts as protest is to complacency" to a context where historical circumstances make it foolish at worse and inconsequential at best. I suppose I could claim that such a manoeuvre brings with it a new version of the West's colonial impulse but that would be to employ one of contemporary criticism's more unworthy tropes. Much contemporary critical thought calls for the use of the Bakhtinian grotesque body as a sign of transgression against a socio-political order, but in much early postcolonial fiction, and certainly in Anand's Untouchable, this function is served by the classical body. I make use of 'grotesque' and 'classical' bodies following Stallybrass and Paton's use of Bakhtin's concepts of the grotesque and the classically beautiful body. The classical statue has no openings or orifices whereas grotesque costume and masks emphasize the gaping mouth, the protuberant belly and JOlintolofComparatl\'f!LUt!ralurealldAeslhelu:s101. X\'Jr: Nos. 1.2: 100/ buttocks. the feet and the genitals. In this way the grotesque body stands in opposition to the bourgeois individualist conception of the body, which finds ils image and legitimation in the classical. The grotesque body is emphasized as a mobile, split, multiple self: a subject of pleasure in processes of exchange; and it is never closed ofT from either its social or ecosystemic con!ext. The classical body on the other hand keeps its distance. In a sense it is disembodied, for it appears indifferent to a body which is 'beautiful', but which is taken for granted. (Stallybrass 22) Where Stallybrass and Paton use Bakhtin's grotesque and classical bodies to analyze bourgeois am.:ieties. I use them to denote postcolonial ones. Postcolonial critics such as Derek Wright. Elleke Boehmer, Stephen Siemon, and Jean M. Kane have pointed out that the body in pre-independence postcolonial fiction is constructed as a whole. anified body. whereas, the body in post-independence postcolonial fiction is fragmented (the bodies they refer to as 'whole' or 'unified'. I refer to as classically beautiful. and the bodies they refer to as 'fragmented.' I refer to as grotesque, or. as Bakhtin puts it, grotesque images are "ugly. monstrous. hideous from the point of view of 'classic' aesthetics, that is. the aesthetics of the ready-made and the completed") (Bakhtin 25). Various explanations are offered for the dichotomous representation onhe body. but most.postcolol1lal critICSagree that the classically beautiful body is constmcted in keeping with the nationalist project of creating' a reversal of the cOlonizer's construction of the native as a grotesque; the fragmented body IS used m order to show that "sectarian contlict, inequities of the class and gender. and neocolonial politics hobble the promise of'independence as the commencement of a utopian wholeness" (Kane 95). The transgressive use of the grotesque body against the national politics of a post-independence India can be found in the works of younger writers such as Salman Rushdie and Ami-tav Ghosh. In keeping. with conventional critical understanding. once colonial mle with its buwry that sees the native as grotesque passes so, too. does tile use of the classical body as the symbol of transgression. Unfortunately, the scheme is far too reductive. It cannot. for example. make sense of the post-independence.postcolonial text that uses a classical body as the symbol of transgression such as Emecehta's The Joys of Motherhood or David MalouCs Remembering Babylon. or more problematically, a text such as Ema Brodber's A~I'l/1in \\'hich both the classical and the grotesque body are used.as symbols oftran:;gression. The post- colonial in literature and critical discourse essentially consists 01 the cultural representation of the destabilization 01 the fiXitieS and bounded stmctures of the age of empire and coiony under British and European world hegemony. (Jeyifo 52) 2 One important force of destabilization has been the various nationalist movements. As the fonner colonies have sought and achieved independence their nationalist movements' , have brought about:l re-construction ofthe configuration of power in their territories. Given) the centnl place' of nationalism in the independence struggles of countries such as India, Nigeria, Kenya, it is not al! surprising that literature trom such areas foregrounds nationalism. 'Nationalism', in the case of the fonnerly colonized seeking decolonization. is identified with the anti-fascist. anti-nnperial, leftist vocabulary of European socialism. After 1945, mostly, 'nationalism' is increasingly identified with the political state that seeks to either expand its territories or stabilize its base against intemal dissidents; it is often seen as being repressive itself (Hobsba\\1n 120-162). The texts I'd like to examine. Mulk Raj Anand's, fJil/ollchabLe (1935) and The Bubble (1984), seem to perfectly emoody the critical' frame I wish to criticize. In the pre- independence Untouchable. Anand's first novel. control ofthe body indicates self-control. discipline and courage. In the post-independence The Bubble, Anand's latest novel. control of the body is viewed as repressron.