scholarly journals Postmodern Chic and Postcolonial Cheek: A Map of Linguistic Resistance, Hybridity, and Pedagogy in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Prathim-Maya Dora-Laskey
Keyword(s):  
Salman Rushdie ◽  
Third Space ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Midnight's Children ◽  
Multiple Meanings

This essay examines how Salman Rushdie appropriates the colonial linguistic medium (English) in Midnight’s Children and embeds resistance within its commonplace and seemingly innocent lexical interstices through the insertion of Hindi/Urdu terms in his wordplay. This lexical hybridity may be examined as a creative example of Homi Bhabha's exegetical “third space” that is postmodern in its disruption of semiotic stasis and postcolonial in its disruption of the primacy of English. This paper contextualizes Rushdie’s code-mixing of English and Hindi/Urdu lexical registers to produce multiple meanings and puns, maps select examples through L.G. Heller’s mode of linguistic diagramming, and provides an overview of the resultant ideological considerations.

History Turmoil And Politico-Cultural Conditions of the Sub-Continental Men In Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-28
Author(s):  
Gunasekaran N ◽  
Bhuvaneshwari S
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Salman Rushdie ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Pluralistic Society ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
The World ◽  
Midnight's Children ◽  
First Time

Salman Rushdie remains a major Indian writer in English. His birth coincides with the birth of a new modern nation on August 15, 1947. He has been justly labelled by the critics as a post-colonial writer who knows his trade well. His second novel Midnight’s Children was published in 1981 and it raised a storm in the hitherto middle class world of fiction writing both in English and in vernaculars. Rushdie for the first time burst into the world of fiction with subversive themes like impurity, illegitimacy, plurality and hybridity. He understands that a civilization called India may be profitably understood as a dream, a collage of many colours, a blending of cultures and nationalities, a pluralistic society and in no way unitary.

Demystifying Magical Realism: A Close Reading of Quichotte

Ensemble ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-173
Author(s):  
Muthunagai P. ◽  
◽  
Marie Josephine Aruna ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Magical Realism ◽  
Salman Rushdie ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
Midnight's Children ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Innovative Techniques

Magical Realism is a genre that brings in together two completely different dimensions of study, namely realism and fantastic imagination (magic). There is always an air of eerie complexity around the genre due to the confluence of such contradictions. Salman Rushdie is one of the most important Indian Diaspora writers prominently known for the triumphant utilization of this genre through innovative techniques in his work. Some of his most famous literary productions of this genre are The Midnight’s children, Shame, etc., This present paper takes Rushdie’s (2019) recent blockbuster publication Quichotte under study, and scrutinizes it from a hermeneutical point of view. It uses the principles theorized by W. B. Frais (2004) in her book Ordinary Enchantments and attempts to analyse the book under the derived perspective. This brief analysis underscores the hidden elements that are unanimously typical of all Magical Realist texts with reference to Quichottein and endeavours to demystify it.

scholarly journals Woman, Genealogy, History: Deconstructions of Family and Nation in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines and Manju Kapur’s Diffi cult Daughters

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Elena Martos Hueso
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Salman Rushdie ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Amitav Ghosh ◽  
Diffi Cult ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Midnight's Children ◽  
History Of ◽  
Posterior Division

Abstract:Since the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, the recent history of Indian Literature in English has been characterised by a growing interest in rewriting the history of India from an angle diametrically opposed to that of official historiography. Taking as a starting point Foucault’s concept of Nietzschean genealogy, which emphasises the value of microhistory and interrogates the function of narrative linearity in historiographic practices, this paper analyses two analogous Indian English novels based on the independence and subsequent partition of the Indian subcontinent: The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh and Difficult Daughters by Manju Kapur. It mainly focuses on the deconstruction of the nationalist myth, where women and motherhood lay at the centre of the gestation and birth of the new nation.Keywords: Amitav Ghosh, Manju Kapur, The Shadow Lines, Diffi cult Daughters, history, genealogy, women, Indian Literature in English.Resumen:Desde la publicación de Midnight’s Children de Salman Rushdie, la historia reciente de la novela india en lengua inglesa se ha visto marcada por un interés creciente en reescribir la historia de la India desde un ángulo diametralmente opuesto al de la historiografía oficial. Partiendo del concepto de la genealogía nietzscheana de Foucault, que enfatiza el valor de la microhistoria y cuestiona la linealidad narrativa de la práctica historiográfica, este estudio analiza dos obras de inquietante paralelismo basadas en la independencia y posterior división del subcontinente indio: The Shadow Lines de Amitav Ghosh y Difficult Daughters de Manju Kapur. Se centra principalmente en la deconstrucción de los mitos nacionalistas, donde la mujer y la maternidad se convierten en foco de toda una alegoría en torno a la gestación y nacimiento de la nueva nación.Palabras clave: Amitav Ghosh, Manju Kapur, The Shadow Lines, Difficult Daughters, historia, genealogía, mujeres, literatura india en lengua inglesa.

scholarly journals Displeasures of Cultural Diversity and Diasporic Hybridity in Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Shahzadi Sumra ◽  
Mehroz Taseer ◽  
Muhammad Sufyan Afzal ◽  
Khishar Sadaf
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Third Space ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Diasporic Community ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
Cultural Choices ◽  
Diasporic Communities

The research explores the strands of cultural hybridity and diaspora compromise that Mendelson has introduced in her novel, Almost English (2013). The research has analyzed the diasporic community as victim of cultural diversity and ambivalence. It focuses on the significance of cultural choices to establish one’s identity; we see identity as a process of negotiation and of articulation of cultural differences. It explores the ways in which Mendelson addresses the hybrid world, a world in which no culture and identity is pure or essential. Homi K. Bhabha’s critical approaches serve as the theoretical framework of this research. His concepts of cultural hybridity, ambivalence, third space and mimicry are of prime interest for the study of this novel. This work highlights the appropriation of Bhabha’s concepts and their application in postcolonial context considering Almost English (2013), for which main motifs include: challenging fixity in one culture, awareness about other existing cultures, and a contestation of view which privileges one culture above other, skirmish realities which finally produce multiple meanings, and values and identities. Finally, the research demonstrates that diasporic communities face displeasures of identity and language while living in a hybrid world. A world where third space is not productive enough for diasporic communities because of which they become conscious of their own identities and place in the society.

The Indian Novel in the 21st Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amardeep Singh
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Salman Rushdie ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Amitav Ghosh ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Narrative ◽  
Midnight's Children ◽  
And Gender

The Indian novel has been a vibrant and energetic expressive space in the 21st century. While the grand postcolonial gestures characteristic of the late-20th-century Indian novel have been in evidence in new novels by established authors such as Vikram Chandra, Amitav Ghosh, and Salman Rushdie, a slate of new authors has emerged in this period as well, charting a range of new novelistic modes. Some of these authors are Kiran Desai, Aravind Adiga, Githa Hariharan, Samina Ali, Karan Mahajan, and Amitava Kumar. In general, there has been a move away from ambitious literary fiction in the form of the “huge, baggy monster” that led to the publication of several monumental postcolonial novels in the 1980s and 1990s; increasingly the most dynamic and influential Indian writing uses new novelistic forms and literary styles tied to the changing landscape of India’s current contemporary social and political problems. The newer generation of authors has also eschewed the aspiration to represent the entirety of life in modern India, and instead aimed to explore much more limited regional and cultural narrative frameworks. If a novel like Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) took its protagonist all over the Indian subcontinent and indexed a large number of important historical controversies in the interest of broad representation, Padma Viswnanathan’s The Toss of a Lemon (2008) limits itself to a focus on a single Tamil Brahmin family’s orientation to issues of caste and gender, and remains effectively local to Tamil Nadu. There is no central agenda or defining idiom of this emerging literary culture, but three major groupings can be identified that encapsulate the major themes and preoccupations of 21st-century Indian fiction: “New Urban Realism,” “Gender and Secular History,” and “Globalizing India, Reinscribing the Past.”

Kashmir as the center of conflict in the novel “Midnight's Children” by Salman Rushdie

Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Olga Igorevna Chuvanova
Keyword(s):  
Salman Rushdie ◽  
Conflict Situation ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Kashmir Valley ◽  
Midnight's Children ◽  
Eastern Cultures ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Clash Of Cultures ◽  
Artistic Images

The subject of this research is the conflicts generated by mythological and historical space in Kashmir Valley, which is one of the central artistic images in the novel “Midnight's Children” by the British writer of Indo-Pakistani descent Salman Rushdie. Conflict situation within the framework of Kashmir’s topos is sense-making, as it is associated with the problem of choice and acquisition of cultural wholeness by the character of the novel. The historically substantiated propensity towards conflict of the actual geographical region, which became the cause for interethnic hostility between Pakistan and India, is complicated by the conflict of Western and Eastern cultures. The "East – West" opposition implies the conflict between the conservatory intentions of the Eastern autochthonous culture and the attempts of it suppression by pro-Western migrants. The author applies historical and literary, hermeneutical and mythopoetic methods. It is determined that involvement of Kashmir’s topos in the artistic world of the novel is substantiated by the historical and interethnic conflicts in the region related to acquisition of independence by India. On the mythological level, Kashmir manifests as a space that synthesizes the ambivalent forces of destruction and creation, which reveals the latent propensity towards conflict that underlies the world. The clash of cultures and worldviews is described in the novel through the symbolic pair of characters – Indian Westerner Adam Aziz and the local boatman Tai. Relations between the characters actualize the stratified systemic conflict (interpersonal, internal, religious-mythological, problem of choice). Subsequently, this conflict propels to the ontological level, reflecting the problem of heroes of finding their place in postcolonial world

scholarly journals Revisiting the Metanarrative of ‘Two-nation’ Theory: A Postmodern Study of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Subham Ghosh ◽  
Smriti Singh
Keyword(s):  
Salman Rushdie ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Postmodern Theory ◽  
Midnight's Children ◽  
Religious Aspect

In 1947 India was violently partitioned into the States of India and Pakistan. The political leaders behind this partition justified their decision based on the two-nation theory which had presented the two major religions namely Hindu and Muslim as two distinct civilizations that could not coexist. By marginalising and ignoring other important aspects of Indian society, and by magnifying only the religious aspect, they successfully created the metanarrative that would strengthen the ‘imagined’ border. Salman Rushdie, a postmodernist at heart, in Midnight’s Children artistically brings the minute details of common Indian lives to the fore and thereby compels the readers to reanalyse the validity of the theory. This study, thus, by referring to the postmodern theory propounded by Jean François Lyotard, has tried to examine the legitimacy of two-nation theory in the light of the micronarratives portrayed in the Midnight’s Children.

scholarly journals HIBRIDITAS POSTKOLONIALISME HOMI K. BHABHA Dalam Novel Midnight’s And Children Salman Rushdie

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Syihabul Furqon ◽  
NFN Busro
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Salman Rushdie ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cross Culture ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Midnight's Children ◽  
The Subject

Postcolonialism is a branch of the cultural studies that focuses on socio-cultural analysis, including signs and languages. Colonialism had clear implications in the actions of postcolonial society. Homi K. Bhabha found identification that in postcolonialism there emerged what he called as hybridity. Hybridity is a cross-culture (both intrinsic and extrinsic) that appears in society in many forms, one of which is language and attitude. This research will review Salman Rushdie's Midnight’s Children novel to reveal which aspects are hybridities. As a methodological tool, the authors use descriptive analysis (intrinsic-extrinsic). In this study, the authors found a large number of hybridity identifications in the novel Midnight’s Children. Especially in the aspects of identity (especially the formation of the subject), language, and inner struggle of characters in the novel. AbstrakPoskolonialisme merupakan cabang kajian studi budaya yang berfokus pada analisis sosiokultural, termasuk tanda-tanda dan bahasa. Kolonialisme memunculkan implikasi yang terbaca jelas dalam tindakan masyarakat poskolonial. Homi K. Bhabha menemukan identifikasi bahwa dalam poskolonialisme muncul apa yang disebutnya sebagai hibriditas. Hibriditas adalah silang budaya, baik intrinsik maupun ekstrinsik, yang muncul di masyarakat dalam banyak bentuk, seperti bahasa dan sikap. Dalam penelitian ini akan ditinjau novel Midnight’s Children karya Salman Rushdie untuk mengungkapkan aspek mana saja yang merupakan hibriditas. Sebagai alat metodologi, penulis menggunakan analisis deskriptif (intrinsik-ekstrinsik). Dalam penelitian ini penulis menemukan sejumlah identifikasi hibriditas dalam novel Midnight’s Children, terutama dalam aspek identitas (pembentukan subjek), bahasa, serta pergulatan batin tokoh..

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