No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
"Globalizing Dissent"? Arundhati Roy, local and postcolonial feminisms in the transnational economy
Abstract
Arundhati Roy's sustained contribution to debates about feminism, postcolonialism, globalization and representation since the publication of The God of Small Things (1997), means that she has come to be seen by the British media as the public voice of India's anti‐globalization movement. Her problematic interventions concerning the impact of the current quickening of globalization processes in India position her at the intersection of global networks of information, knowledge, and fluctuating commodity values. This paper aims to evaluate Roy's interventions, specifically the effectiveness of her polemical ‘voice’, in relation to anti‐capitalist, transnational feminist practice, and her representation in the British media. Although her hyperbolic rhetorical strategies, odd appropriations and elisions at times undo the effectiveness of her argument, nevertheless these techniques also illustrate the difficulties of a speaking position that is not already subject to co‐option by the established discourses .of transcultural exchange systems.
The present study intends to thoroughly examine the Postcolonial feminist perspective in Arundhati Roys novel The God of Small Things by focusing on the theoretical approaches of Gaytri Spivak, Trinh T.Minha and Ania Loomba. The ambivalent personality of colonized women is tarnished due to subalternity imposed by the patriarchal culture of India. The destructive nature of the Western Imperialism forced the people to endure wild oppression by British colonizers. Postcolonialism paved the way for the double oppression of women. Women became the victim of not only British Imperialists but also native cultural patriarchy. Roy successfully intricates three generations of women i.e Baby Kochamma, Mammachi, Ammu, and Rahel into the fabric of the novel to acme the plight of women in the Third World Nations..
Arundhati Roy’s non-fictional writing has been interpreted as the epitome of an emerging “realist impulse” at the heart of postcolonial literature since 2000, and a move away from the reflexive and metaphorical style of her first novel, The God of Small Things. This article reassesses the opposition between fictional and non-fictional writing by addressing Roy’s second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Rather than endorsing a concept of realism understood as transparent, documentary representation of reality, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness proposes a contradictory and digressive poetics whereby fictional and non-fictional elements coexist. Roy’s critical stance on realism encompasses both her commitment to engage with contemporary history and her questioning of literature’s ability to do justice to suffering. Accordingly, Roy’s second novel reframes the literary concept of realism as an “aesthetic of the inconsolable” aiming to address what is left over from non-fictional accounts of politics and history.
Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment provides a historical context for understanding the contested relationships between women and nature, and it articulates strategies for moving beyond the dualistic theories and practices that often frame those relationships.
In 1974, Françoise d’Eaubonne coined the term "ecofeminism" to raise awareness about interconnections between women’s oppression and nature’s domination in an attempt to liberate women and nature from subordination. Since then, ecofeminism has attracted scholars and activists from various disciplines and positions to assess the relationship between the cultural human and the natural non-human through gender reconsiderations. The contributors to this volume present critical and constructive perspectives on ecofeminism throughout its history, from the beginnings of ecofeminism in the 1970s through to contemporary and emerging developments in the field, drawing on animal studies, postcolonialism, film studies, transgender studies, and political ecology.
This interdisciplinary and international collection of essays demonstrates the ongoing relevance of ecofeminism as a way of understanding and responding to the complex interactions between genders, bodies, and the natural environment. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecofeminism as well as those involved in environmental studies and gender studies more broadly.
This book investigates representations of the nation of India as characterized by unity and diversity in the works of six contemporary novelists, linking their work to important political, historical and theoretical writings.
This book engages with current developments in postcolonial research, exploring notions of cultural transmission, tradition and modernity, authenticity, cross-cultural aesthetics and postcolonial ethics. The author considers the ethical responsibility of the postcolonial intellectual, enhancing our understanding of this topic through the concept of custodianship, which may be defined as a responsibility towards the other in forms of cultural and literary inheritance. The author introduces custodianship as a central theme and a vital question for the committed intellectual today, proposing original interpretations of major postcolonial texts by key figures including Anita Desai, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Mahasweta Devi and Arundhati Roy. Through close reading and historical analysis, Postcolonial Custodianship reveals that a practice of custodianship has always been an essential element of these writers’ ethical engagement, yet in a way that has never been explored. The author contends that the question of custodianship should not be seen as a merely negative designation; it is by redefining the very meaning of custodianship that the ethical dimension of postcolonialism can be rediscovered.
[T]he essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.– Aldous Huxley[T]he essay is not intimidated by the depraved profundity which claims that truth and history are incompatible.– Theodore AdornoThe English department has been a bastion of genre, and what questions genre also questions its raison d'être.– Peter HitchcockWhy have Arundhati Roy's essays received so little academic attention? This article argues that Roy's essays disrupt the boundaries of the essay canon, first of all by challenging the hegemony of the “personal” essay, and secondly by refusing incorporation into the liberal multicultural curriculum. I argue that the formal and rhetorical radicalism of Roy's prose is equally as much a function of its rhetorical construction (its art), as of its socio-historical occasion (its grounding in the very real solidarities of mass movements). Here, I identify and analyze (i) the dialogical and carnivalesque elements of Roy's prose, and (ii) the grounding of these Bakhtinian elements in a moment of affiliative praxis. Together, these are two distinct but related moments in what I call Roy's “rhetoric of radical cosmopolitanism,” and it is finally this “radical cosmopolitanism,” I argue, that is the fount of the subversive energies of Roy's essays.
Postcolonial criticism challenges the normative conceptions of cosmopolitanism rooted in metropolitan cultures by inviting locally-bred, subaltern and third world experiences as forces of intervention and interruption in shaping universal(ist) ethics for a shared humanity. Nevertheless, these approaches remain more speculative than substantive, and they lack the empirical currency required for grounding local cosmopolitanism(s) outside of diasporic, transnational, exilic contexts. Through a close reading of R.K. Narayan’s fictional town of Malgudi, this paper explores its metonymical implications for a local cosmopolitanism (“locopolitan”): its unique rural and urban constellations; and an ethno-humanist narrative drawn along the “locopolitan” lines as opposed to the metropolitan (pre)conditioning of cosmopolitan experience. Such a reading aims at opening up an empirical basis for local cosmopolitanism within the postcolonial framework.
Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things is frequently praised for its sensitivity to social injustice and its feminist politics, but it has also been criticized as exoticist and melodramatic. Thus, for instance, the representation of the lower class “subaltern” is essentially a fantasy, simultaneously unreachable and desirable, morally superior and physically perfect, a mythical “god of small things”, but also an object of terrible fear, mean and disgusting, driven by the lowest possible instincts. The present essay seeks to examine the various ways in which the political message carried by Roy's novel is embedded in and undermined by a range of such fantasies, desires and fears.
Travel writing, it has been said, helped produce the rest of the world for a Western audience. Could the same be said more recently of so-called "postcolonial" writing? In this work, Graham Huggan examines some of the processes by which value is given to postcolonial works within their cultural field. Using both literary-critical and sociological methods of analysis, Huggan discusses both the exoticist discourses that run through postcolonial studies, and the means by which postcolonial "products" are marketed and domesticated for Western consumption. This volume examines everything from well-meaning multiculturalism, tourism and pseudo-anthropology, to the Booker Prize, anthologies and academic texts. It points to the urgent need for a more carefully grounded understanding of the processes of production, dissemination and consumption that have surrounded the rapid development of the postcolonial field..
Boehmer begins by outlining suggestive parallels between the doubly orientalizing reception of an Indian woman poet, Sarojini Naidu, in 1890s London, and the publicity and critical enthusiasm surrounding the appearance of Arundhati Roy's first novel, The God of Small Things, in the 1990s. Building on these century-broad connections, she goes on to observe how, despite its liberatory agendas, certain constructions within postcolonial criticism appear to emerge virtually intact out of the colonial discourses of the past: in particular, the conflation of biology and biography in representations of the writing of the South, and constructions of a singular oriental femaleness, and an extravagant oriental style. The second part of the essay examines more closely these seemingly 'neo-orientalist' underpinnings of postcolonial literary criticism located in the West, and then considers resistances to these, both in terms of cultural contextualization and verbal recalcitrance.
Power, knowledge and governance: globalizing intellectual property management, reproducing inequalities Globalization: Theory and Practice
- Farrands
Farrands, Chris. "Power, knowledge and governance: globalizing intellectual property management, reproducing inequalities." Globalization: Theory and Practice. Ed. Elenore Kofman and Gillian Youngs. 2 nd ed. London: Continuum, 2003. 249-261.
Continuum Contemporaries — Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things: A Reader's Guide Nandy, Ashis. The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable SelvesGlobalization as Hybridization Global Modernities
- Purnima Mankekar
- Mullaney
- Julie
Mankekar, Purnima. Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham NC: Duke UP, 1999. Mullaney, Julie. Continuum Contemporaries — Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things: A Reader's Guide. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. Nandy, Ashis. The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves. Princeton N.J.: Princeton UP, 1995. Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. "Globalization as Hybridization." Global Modernities. Ed. M. Featherstone, S. Lash and Roland Robertson. London: Sage, 1995. 45-69.
The places of women in trading places revisited: gendered global/regional regimes and inter-nationalized feminist resistance Globalization: Theory and Practice
- Anne Runyan
- Sisson
Runyan, Anne Sisson. "The places of women in trading places revisited: gendered global/regional regimes and inter-nationalized feminist resistance." Globalization: Theory and Practice. Ed. Elenore Kofman and Gillian Youngs.
Replumbing the Planet
- Pearce
- Fred
Pearce, Fred. "Replumbing the Planet." New Scientist 178.2398 (7 June 2003): 30-36.
The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge Water Wars: Privatisation, Pollution and ProfitGender inequalities and feminist politics in a global perspective Globalization: Theory and Practice
- Shiva
- Vandana
Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed, 1989.. The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics. London: Zed, 1991.. Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass: Southend Press, 1997.. Water Wars: Privatisation, Pollution and Profit. London: Pluto Press, 2002. Steans, Jill. "Gender inequalities and feminist politics in a global perspective." Globalization: Theory and Practice. Ed. Elenore Kofman and Gillian Youngs.
The Anti-American The New Republic <http://www.tnr
- Ian Buruma
- Bunting
- Madeline
Buruma, Ian. "The Anti-American." The New Republic <http://www.tnr.eom/p/ docsub.mhtm>. (18 April 2002.) Bunting, Madeline. "Dambuster." The Guardian Weekend (28 July 2001): 20-26.
Novelist in worse trouble with Indian supreme court The Guardian
- Harding
- Luke
Harding, Luke. "Novelist in worse trouble with Indian supreme court." The Guardian (3 August 2001):
I'm a Pre-Programmed Optimist!
- Juan A Goodman
- Gonzalez
Goodman. A. and Juan Gonzalez. "I'm a Pre-Programmed Optimist!" Democracy Now <http://www.democracvnow.org> (2 June 2003.).
Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the Question of Nationhood Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. Sharpe, JennyA Conversation with Gayatri Spivak: Politics and Imagination
- Sankaran
- Krishna
Sankaran, Krishna. Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the Question of Nationhood. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. Sharpe, Jenny. "A Conversation with Gayatri Spivak: Politics and Imagination." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28.2 (2002): 609-24.
Globalization: Theory and Practice. 2 nd ed. London and New York: Continuum, 2003. Mohanty, Chandra TalpadeUnder Western Eyes' Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles
- Elenore Kofman
Kofman, Elenore., and Gillian Youngs, eds. Globalization: Theory and Practice. 2 nd ed. London and New York: Continuum, 2003. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. '"Under Western Eyes' Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28.2 (2002): 499-535.
Places and Politics in an Age of Globalization. USA: Rowman and LittlefieldThe Great Indian Rape Trick. Parts 1 and 2 The God of Small Things. London: Flamingo, 1997. . The Cost of Living. London: Flamingo, 1999. . Power Politics The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire
- Roy Arundhati
Prazniak, Roxann and Arif Dirlik, eds. Places and Politics in an Age of Globalization. USA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. Roy. Arundhati. "The Great Indian Rape Trick. Parts 1 and 2". <http:// @BULLET www.umiacs.umd.edu/users/sawweb/sawnet/roy_bql.html >(22 August 1994). The God of Small Things. London: Flamingo, 1997.. The Cost of Living. London: Flamingo, 1999.. Power Politics. Cambridge, Mass: Southend Press, 2001.. War Talk. Cambridge, Mass: Southend Press, 2003.. The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. London: Flamingo, 2004.