The Native Informant Speaks

2021 ◽  
pp. 176-220
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Yuan Shu

In juxtaposing The Fifth Book of Peace with The Woman Warrior, this essay argues that Kingston has moved away from the narrative role as a native informant and presents a new multicultural United States by inventing a Chinese American epistemology and intervening in US imperialism around the globe. Such a move substantiates Mignolo’s theory of “global decolonial thinking,” a critical process that reclaims non-Western notions of humanity and epistemology.


ARTMargins ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-120
Author(s):  
Tammer El-Sheikh

This article presents an interpretation of three works by Cairo-based artist Hassan Khan. The works are “17 and in AUC” (2003), “Conspiracy: Dialogue/Diatribe” (2006/2010) and “Dead Dog Speaks” (2010). I argue that in these works Khan stages a withdrawal from the legacy of the 1967 Naksa. He does this by means of a separation of his figures from their particular contexts, reflexive narrative strategies, non-periodic scene structures and substitutive manipulations of his figures. I argue ultimately that Khan's staging of uprooted figures of Egyptian identity sends up the ethnographic notion of the “native informant” on which post-Naksa nationalists discourses have been based.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
Humaira Riaz

'Native informant' acclaims the transmission of stereotypical representation of Muslim society as a general rule and women specifically. The present work provides a comprehensive prospect of women status defined by religion Islam to build consciousness globally. Through qualitative inquiry, the present study critically analyzes Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003). Iranian writer Azar Nafisi assumes the role of 'native informant' who amplifies the narrative to authenticate her account. The study employs 'amplification' as apparatus to scrutinize fundamentalist perspective of religion Islam reflected in Iranian fiction. Spivak's concept of 'native informant' is reproduced in the narratives to establish the narrator's role as a hybrid character whose thoughts regularly record and oppose the assumed fundamentalist obligations set by the Islamic regime. The narrative begins in the narrator's house, who ardently assembles her university students and discusses various classical literary works. The memoir recounts a woman's experience in Tehran before, during, and after the revolution. Names of characters are concealed to keep individuals safe from probable vengeance and degradation. Primarily, the study enquires how knowledge production through writing personal narratives runs into mainstream culture, characterizing the representation of stereotypes. Narratives inform about a specific culture and mirror the role of 'native informant' in amplifying fundamentals of native culture and religion. Nafisi's account of extensive cultural and religious judgments from context-specific attempts to extrapolate that Islamic Republic Iran vehemently formed a desperate unobtrusive region, which maltreated women. Nafisi may have a self-protective standpoint for women, but she emerged more like a "native informant" rather than a social reformer by amplifying the situation.


T oung Pao ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 106 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 401-457
Author(s):  
Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Abstract Joshua Marshman, English Baptist missionary in India, spent the decade between 1805 and 1814 studying the Chinese language. Marshman’s unique vantage point in India makes him stand out among European Sinologists of his time. Marshman’s familiarity with Indian languages and the local traditions of studying them informed his speculative publications on Chinese. Learning Chinese from a native informant was not enough for him. He thought that only through a mastery of both Sanskrit and Mandarin could the Chinese language be really comprehended and put to use by foreign missionaries and scholars alike. This article examines Marsh­man’s course of study and his publications on the Chinese language. It argues that although Marshman’s hope to forge a hybrid, Sanskrit-infused Sinology appeared as a dead end in his time, he was right to focus on the importance of foreign contacts in the formation of the modern Chinese language.


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