Mimicry and Shame in Naipaul's The Mimic Men and Desai's The Inheritance of Loss

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
Zlatan Filipovic
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Novels ◽  
Diasporic Identity

Reflecting on the affective nature of diasporic experience, the essay begins by developing Arendt's understanding of displacement as a temporal disjunction of being caught between the claims of the past and the exigencies of the present. The impossibility of salvaging the past against the often stifling imperatives of the present that she accounts for in her essay ‘We Refugees’ is, however, also what produces affective economies in the diasporic subject that I argue are crucial to diasporic identity formation. In this respect, I focus on shame, which I see as an affective residue of the unsalvageable past in the experience of displacement. In order to determine and further develop the significance of shame for diasporic subject formation, this essay will consider its impact on subjectivity in a comparative close reading of two contemporary novels, V. S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, both of which manifest the elision of the past in diasporized subjects and the movement towards strategies of identification articulated in mimicry. Mimicry, seen in Fanon's rather than Bhabha's terms, as a disavowal of the past, fails, however, to provide a viable strategy of identification for a diasporic subject in the novels that testify rather to the affective cost of our incumbent efforts to start anew.

scholarly journals “If You Can Read, You Can Write, or Can You, Really?”

2020 ◽  
pp. 367-388
Author(s):  
Jim Collins
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
University Education ◽  
Professional Writing ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Novels ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe popular literary culture that emerged in the late 1990 s depended on a number of interdependent factors that formed a unique media ecology—book clubs (actual, online, televisual) literary bestsellers, Amazon.com, high-concept adaptation films, “superstore” bookstore chains, etc. The reading cultures generated by that media ecology were unified by certain overarching values, none more significant than the empowerment of amateur readers who were driven by the conviction that passionate reading was equal, if not superior to the bloodless close reading of professionalized readers. While the latter required a long apprenticeship, the former was guided by a self-imaging process that was fueled by a reading advice industry that provided confidence-building measures to validate that reading. The empowerment of readers depended on knowing where to look for both expertise and validation. Or, to put it another way, quality reading depended less on native intelligence, or a university education, and more on the ability to search and filter. Many of the factors that led to a fundamental recalibration of the relationship between amateur and professionalized reading have also changed the relationship between amateur and professional writing. I want to focus on the deeply conflicted perspectives concerning how the craft of writing is taught, or even can be taught, that have emerged over the past year in North American Literary cultures, in three contemporary novels, Tommy Orange’s There There (2018), Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend (2018) and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous (2019).

Wages for Soundwork

Resonance ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210
Author(s):  
Joshua Hudelson
Keyword(s):  
Panic Attacks ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Financial Independence ◽  
Reproductive Labor ◽  
The Past ◽  
Labor Power ◽  
Sales Clerks

Over the past decade, ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) has emerged from whisper-quiet corners of the Internet to become a bullhorn of speculation on the human sensorium. Many consider its sonically induced “tingling” to be an entirely novel, and potentially revolutionary, form of human corporeality—one surprisingly effective in combating the maladies of a digitally networked life: insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. Complicating these claims, this article argues that ASMR is also neoliberal repackaging of what Marx called the reproduction of labor power. Units of these restorative “tingles” are exchanged for micro-units of attention, which YouTube converts to actual currency based on per-1,000-view equations. True to the claims of Silvia Federici and Leopoldina Fortunati, this reproductive labor remains largely the domain of women. From sweet-voiced receptionists to fawning sales clerks (both of whom are regularly role-played by ASMRtists), sonic labor has long been a force in greasing the gears of capital. That it plays a role in production is a matter that ASMRtists are often at pains to obscure. The second half of this article performs a close reading of what might be considered the very first ASMR film: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Through this film, the exploitative dimensions of ASMR can be contrasted with its potential for creating protected spaces of financial independence and nonnormative corporeal practices.

(Re)storying Japanese Canadian Histories: Artistic Engagements

2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862098726
Author(s):  
Matthew Chin ◽  
Izumi Sakamoto ◽  
Jane Ku ◽  
Ai Yamamoto
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Art Making ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Common Structure ◽  
Academic History ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Japanese Canadian ◽  
Cultural Identity Formation

This paper examines how Japanese Canadian (JC) artists challenge discursive limitations of constructing representations of JC pasts. Their interventions into JC history-making are significant given the rise of interest in and proliferation of JC historical accounts, partly as a result of the accelerated passing of the remaining survivors of JC incarceration within a broader context of unsettled and unsettling discourses around incarceration in JC families and communities. Contrary to narratives of JC history premised on the conventions of academic history writing, we explore how JC artists engage with the past through their creative practices. Focusing on JC artist Emma Nishimura’s exhibit, The weight of what cannot be remembered, we suggest that JC creative history-making practices have important implications for processes of ethno-racial and-cultural identity formation. In so doing, we decenter state-bound history-making processes that reproduce colonial frameworks of JC subjectivity, temporal linearity, and “objectivity.” Instead, we focus on the temporally circuitous way that Nishimura and other JC artists engage with the past through the idiom of personal intimacy in ways that facilitate a more expansive notion of JC identity and community. Though Nishimura’s work is indexical as opposed to representative of contemporary JC art-making, it is significant in tapping into a common structure of feeling among JC artists that emphasizes a notion of JC’ness rooted in the active struggle to establish a relationship with the past. In attending to Nishimura’s work, we highlight the productivity of art-making as a method of (re)storying to expand meaning-making endeavors within and across communities.

scholarly journals IDENTITAS DIASPORIS TIGA GENERASI PEREMPUAN CINA DALAM ONLY A GIRL KARYA LIAN GOUW (Diasporic Identity of Three Generations of Chinese Females in Only A Girl Written by Lian Gouw)

ATAVISME ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Ratna Asmarani
Keyword(s):  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Great Role ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family House

Identity is crucial in a person’s life. Diasporic identity is much more complicated because it involves at least two cultures. The focus of this paper is to analyze the diasporic identity of three generations of diasporic Chinese females as represented in Lian Gouw’s novel entitled Only a Girl. The data and supporting concepts are compiled using library research and close reading. The qualitative analysis is used to support the contextual literary analysis combining the intrinsic aspect focusing on the female characters and the extrinsic aspects concerning diaspora and identity. The results shows that each Chinese female character has tried to construct her own diasporic identity. However, the social, cultural, political, educational, and economic contexts play a great role in the struggles to construct the diasporic identity. It can be concluded that the younger the generation, the braver their effort to construct their diasporic identity and the braver their decision to take a distance with the big family house eventhough they have to face stronger and more complicated conflicts to realize and actualize their personal construction of diasporic identity.

scholarly journals ‘A Kind of Sensory, Strange Thing to Experience’: Speaking Environmental Disaster in the Sea Empress Project Archive

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Environmental Disaster ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Sensory Event ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores embodied encounters with the Sea Empress oil spill of 1996 and their representation in oral narratives. Through a close reading of the personal testimonies collected in the Sea Empress Project archive, I examine the relationship between intense sensory experiences of environmental change and everyday interpretations of the disaster and its legacy. The art­icle first outlines the ways in which this collection of voices reveals sensory memories, embodied affects and narrative choices to be deeply entwined in oral representations of the spill, disclosing a ‘sensory event’ that created a powerful awareness of both environmental surroundings and their relationship to everyday social processes. Then, reading these narratives against-the-grain, I argue that narrators’ accounts tell a paradoxical story of a disaster that most now wish to forget, and reveal an ambivalent legacy of environmental change that is similarly consigned to the past. Finally, I relate this social forgetting of the Sea Empress to the wider history of environmental consciousness in modern Britain.

scholarly journals Socio-literary Study of Robert Browning and Darwesh Durrani’s Dramatic Monologues: A Comparative Literary Approach

sjesr ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-143
Author(s):  
Raham Dil Khan ◽  
Dr. Khan Sardaraz
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
Reading Technique ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Dramatic Monologues

Previous literature is laden with research on Browning’s dramatic monologues from various perspectives. This paper will compare Browning’s dramatic monologues with Derwesh Durrani’s poetry from socio-literary perspective. Literary theories of analogy and variation will be used to find out similarities and differences in their poetry. Two poems from each poet have been selected for analysis through close reading technique on the model of theories of variation and analogy. Stratified sampling technique was used for taking the representative sample from the data. The findings reveals that Darwesh’s poetry exhibits most of the dramatic features of Browning’s dramatic monologues, but his poetry is more poetic, while Browning’s poetry is more dramatic; Browning invigorates the past, Darwesh recreates the present. In addition, Browning’s poems deals with domestic issues like gender violence, love and marriage, Darwesh’s poetry deals with social issues and patriotism, and contrary to Browning, he stands for women’s rights and sensibilities. This paper suggests further studies purely from socio-cultural perspective of Darwesh’s dramatic monologues, which will contribute to the existing literature on dramatic monologues.

‘Till the whisper…You know…When you can't hear the words’: Narrated Memory and the ‘Fragmented’ Body in Samuel Beckett's Late Drama

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-155
Author(s):  
Michelle Charalambous
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
The Body ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Works

Samuel Beckett's interest in the experience of memory and the central role the body plays in the re-experience of the past has been most evident since the time he composed Krapp's Last Tape (1958), one of his most famous memory plays where the body can actually ‘touch’ its voice of memory. In this context, the present article provides a close reading of two of Beckett's late works for the theatre, namely That Time (1976) and Ohio Impromptu (1981), where the author once again addresses the relationship between the body and memory. Unlike his earlier drama, however, in That Time and Ohio Impromptu Beckett creates a ‘distance’, as it were, between memory and the body on stage by presenting the former as a narrative and by reducing the latter to an isolated part or by restricting it to limited movements. Looking closely at this ‘distance’ in these late plays, the article underlines that the body does not lose its authority or remains passive in its re-experience of the past. Rather – the article argues – the body essentially plays a determining role in these stripped-down forms as is shown in its ability to ‘interrupt’ and somatically punctuate the fixity of the narrative form memory takes in these works.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuire Valkeakari
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
The West ◽  
Innovative Strategies ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Historical Origin ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Geographical Locations

The epilogue affirms that the old Anglophone African diaspora in the West is characterized by considerable ethnic, national, socioeconomic, sociocultural, religious, and political diversity as well as by markedly different interplays of race, class, and gender in different geographical locations and microcontexts. Black diasporic sensibilities perpetually renew and transform themselves in response to the limitless variety of life experiences in the diaspora. Nevertheless, rather than merely emphasizing black diversity for its own sake, this book has repeatedly brought the discussion back to the original propellers of the old African diaspora. This book’s diasporic hermeneutics have highlighted the historical origin of the old African diaspora in the Middle Passage and slavery and the cultural mediation of the collective memory of this ur-event. This emphasis on the old African diaspora’s origin in an event has anchored this book’s approach to diaspora in a racially antiessentialist understanding of black diasporic identity formation. Middle Passage narratives both mourn the lives that were lost as a result of the Atlantic slave trade and highlight the survivors’ innovative strategies of survival, acclimatization, and resistance. These themes, in modified yet recognizable forms, are also powerfully present in the novels about later black migrations analyzed in this book.

The Rebirth of Poetics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hui
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
Renaissance Poetry ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Renaissance Poetics

This chapter traces the genealogy of the immortality of poetry topos from antiquity to the sixteenth century. It argues that the Renaissance poetics of ruins’s yearning for timelessness is accomplished through the strategy of a temporal multiplicity, a process that transmutes the past and in turn open its own transformation, from author to author, reader to reader. In other words, Renaissance poetry, implicitly or explicitly, hopes to transcend its temporal and spatial horizons (aspiring to be a monument), yet finds its survival in the immanent world, by being recycled, cited, and transformed by successors (living as a ruin). This tension—to be within or without time—drives much of the discourse surrounding ruins. Architectural destruction always compels poets to create works that rise above the sublunary world, while at the same time it inevitably leads them back into the thickets of exchange and mediation. The chapter ends with close-reading of several sonnets of Shakespeare.

China–India Myths in Xu Dishan’s ‘Goddess of Supreme Essence’

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-93
Author(s):  
Gal Gvili
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
China And India ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyses the scholarship of prominent May Fourth writer Xu Dishan as gateway for understanding his fiction. A close examination of his engagement with Indian religions and mythology in his fiction constitutes a vision of a China–India literary horizon through a literary device termed as ‘transregional metonymy’: tropes that travelled between China and India through the cultural exchange of myths. The chapter elaborates on this literary device through a close reading of Xu Dishan’s ‘Goddess of Supreme Essence’ (1923). The reading shows how a shared China–India figurative domain emerges in the story to offer a new understanding of myths and how they function in modern life. It also suggests that instead of rewriting the past, myths can rewrite the present; instead of using myths to establish a national culture, literature can use myths to imagine a transregional horizon. Focusing on India to think about the nature of storytelling and the relationship between myth and reality, Xu Dishan undid the binary distinction between ancient India as a soul brother and colonial India as a cautionary tale.

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