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http://inet.vidyasagar.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/1071
2024-03-28T13:59:57ZReconstructing the excluded voices: The politics of resistance in Arundhati Roy’s non-fictional essays
http://inet.vidyasagar.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/6255
Title: Reconstructing the excluded voices: The politics of resistance in Arundhati Roy’s non-fictional essays
Authors: Chaudhury, Avishek
Abstract: Arundhati Roy got phenomenal success with her maiden Booker Prize winning
novel, The God of Small Things (1997) and became the poster child of an emerging
power. However, the interesting thing is that instead of exploring the genre further
she soon fused her ‘aesthetic sensibility’ with the ‘political entity’ and became an
author-activist, a vigorous voice of the global dissent. This transformation - from a
literary sensation to a polarizing polemist - is largely due to her painful
consciousness of a world where ruthless exploitation of the poor is done in the name
of progress and development. And thereby, the obligation she felt as a writer to
forge an alliance – a direct link between the personal and the public, between art and
activism, first, to promote cultural awareness of the exploitation and marginalization
of the poor people by providing physical evidence of the civil and terrestrial
injustices inflicted upon them; and then to narrativize the possible methods of
resistance and the subsequent reconstruction by contesting and re-shaping the
‘western ideologies of development’ pursued at present. The present study,
therefore, investigates the interface between the discourses of resistance viz
Marxism, Feminism, Post Colonialism and Subaltern Studies in the non-fictional
essays of Roy as her generic mobility, her art and activism, amalgamates within her
narrative the multiple minoritarian perspectives.
As such, this research paper consists of five chapters. The introduction serves
as the necessary backdrop for the rationale of this research work. It traces the
evolution and transformation of Arundhati Roy from the much-hyped prestigious
Booker Prize winner to an author-activist whose sole concern is to narrate the untold
and unheard tales about the pathetic plight of the socially excluded people from the multiple minoritarian perspectives. The first chapter concerns Reconstruction and
Roy’s role in reconstructing the excluded voices by confronting the dominant and
oppressive structures on both, the global and the local level. The second chapter,
‘Reaction Against Environmental Injustice’ penetrates into the representations of
eco-consciousness of Roy’s texts from an eco-critical standpoint. It deals with the
issues of environment – its exploitation and degradation due to the pursuance of the
flawed developmental policies of corporate globalization and the terrible plight of a
large number of people displaced and dispossessed to make room for the mega
projects. The third chapter, ‘Resistance Against Neo-Imperial Injustice’ relates and
limits to the injustices inflicted upon the laymen by neo-imperialism that operates
through the overt and covert means of corporate globalization and neo-liberalism.
An in-depth analysis of Roy’s texts has been done to understand how she
problematizes the issues of corporate globalization, neo-liberalism and the
catastrophic effect of America’s global war on terror. The fourth chapter, ‘State
Sponsored Communal Violence and Genocide: A Critique’ emphasizes on
communal violence and genocide - both in India and abroad – to understand how
they are used by the power as effective tools of hegemonic expansion. The fifth
chapter, ‘A Review of Maoist Insurrection’ critiques at length the impact of India’s
New Economic Policy upon the tribal heart-land of India, the Maoist insurrection
and the subsequent launching of Operation Green Hunt – fuelling a serious internal
crisis in the country. The conclusion is based on the findings and inferences that are
derived and wrested from the research work of her non-fictional endeavours.2021-08-20T00:00:00ZRepresentation of Indigeneity in the Select Works of Verrier Elwin
http://inet.vidyasagar.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/6203
Title: Representation of Indigeneity in the Select Works of Verrier Elwin
Authors: Bhowmick, Arpita
Abstract: This thesis entitled “Representation of Indigeneity in the Select Works of Verrier
Elwin” deals with various facets of indigeneity in the Indian context. The significant
parameters of nature, women and community are discussed with reference to the
literary works of Verrier Elwin. The recent critical approaches to nature, women’s
issues and communitarian identity are also included in the core chapters. Various
influences upon Elwin have also been traced in course of discussion. The influences
of British Romantic poets, Indian tribal folkloric traditions and the leaders of Indian
Freedom struggle have been charted with factual details. Many significant
indigenous cultural registers are identified, annotated and analyzed in the context of
indigenous identity. The third, fourth and fifth chapters of this thesis deal with the
core argument of my research. I have attempted to show how Elwin’s reading of the
indigenous reality was a pioneering attempt to discover the true spirit of indigeneity.
Compared to the mainstream construct of indigenous identity it’s a discovery of an
alternative worldview. I have endeavoured to highlight how Elwin identified the
politics of representation of indigeneity and coined a new rhetoric of appreciating
indigenous literature.2021-08-12T00:00:00ZCultural identity and the problematics of colonial modernity: A study of the select novels of Amitav Ghosh
http://inet.vidyasagar.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/6145
Title: Cultural identity and the problematics of colonial modernity: A study of the select novels of Amitav Ghosh
Authors: Rana, Pabitra Kumar
Abstract: The dissertation is intended to examine the representation of colonial modernity vis-à-vis
cultural identity in the select novels of Amitav Ghosh. In his novels Ghosh has dealt with
various postcolonial issues in the context of Southeast Asia. A particular thread that runs
through most of his works is the complex phenomenon known as colonial modernity.
Colonialism and modernity are mutually constitutive. Colonialism projected modernity as its
justificatory logic for ruling the colonised. Apparently, modernity was supposed to bring
progress and liberation in the colonies; but it was actually the tool of the colonisers to
subjugate the colonised. Colonialism and modernity collaborated in forming what Walter D.
Mignolo calls ‘the colonial matrix of power’ which exerts strong influence upon the
colonised in four fields: epistemology, sexuality and gender, economy and authority. ‘The
colonial matrix of power’ propagates the Western ideas and practices in these four domains
as universal paradigm, and at the same time, discredits non-Western ideas and practices. But
the implementation of modernity in the colonies is not a smooth, one-dimensional process.
Modernity is accepted as well as questioned, resisted, subverted and undermined by the
colonised. Even the colonisers themselves violated the much-touted principles of modernity.
In his novels Amitav Ghosh has addressed some of these concerns relating to the complex
processes of internalisation, rejection, subversion, dismantling and undermining of colonial
modernity. In other words, Ghosh’s novels offer a critique of colonial modernity. Being a
writer who is preoccupied with human predicament, Ghosh has presented his critique through
the subjectivity and identity of his fictional characters. An analysis of the subjectivity and
identity of his characters shows how modernity is problematised in the Third World scenario.
This study aims to unfold Ghosh’s critique of colonial modernity in the domains of
epistemology and sexuality and gender with reference to his select novels.2021-08-11T00:00:00ZRepresentation of Transgressive Women in Late 18th and Early 19th Century Select British Gothic Fiction
http://inet.vidyasagar.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/5586
Title: Representation of Transgressive Women in Late 18th and Early 19th Century Select British Gothic Fiction
Authors: Chakraborty, Suman
Abstract: Fred Botting in his book Gothic (1996) has defined Gothic as a site of excess and transgression though he has refused to consider Gothic fiction as an “unrestrained celebration of unsanctioned excesses” (8). For him, it is a site of struggle between two opposing forces of propriety and excess. Transgression in the Gothic novels, for him, gives an opportunity to interrogate and re-examine the accepted boundaries and limits. How far did transgression help women to interrogate the limits? Were they really empowered to transgress the accepted gender roles? Whether did Gothic novels offer the woman characters any agency to speak for themselves? These questions have stirred my interest to find their answers through the present research. There have been several critical works by the feminist critics on the representation of women in the Gothic novels written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Most of the critics are less optimistic about the feminist potentials of the Gothic fiction of this time. In the Terror mode of writing popularized by Ann Radcliffe and the others, the heroines were endowed with passive strength and courage while facing patriarchal aggression. Their limited strength and their partial resistance to patriarchal aggression reflect the compromised status of their autonomy. On the other hand, the novels, which were written in the Horror mode, are often treated as misogynists for their depiction of women as seductive, dangerous, and even demonic. As far as I know, there are very few researches and critical works that have attempted to substantiate feminist potentials of these novels written in the Horror mode. Besides this, the novelists and the novels I have taken for detailed analysis is a relatively less explored area. Excepting M. G. Lewis’ The Monk, a few articles and essays have been written on the other novels (Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya and The Passions, William Beckford’s Vathek), but any full-length study on them has hardly been attempted.
In this study, I have made a humble attempt to show that how the demonization of women in the selected Gothic novels written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in England actually enables them to transgress the gender roles prevailing in the society. Per Faxneld in his book, Satanic Feminism (2015) has defined Satanic Feminism as a tactic of reading that involves “a reinterpretation of Satan, and especially his role in the Edenic myth” (29). Following Faxneld’s approach, I have tried to relate the biblical myth of the Great Fall to my reading of the selected Gothic novels written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Besides this, Marquis de Sade’s theory of counter-ethic where conventional virtue becomes vice, and vice becomes virtue and its feminist interpretation by Angela Carter in The Sadean Women (1979) have helped me to show that demonization of women actually empowered women, helped them to transgress the accepted gender roles and thus boomeranged on patriarchy.2020-10-19T00:00:00Z