Baishakhi Bhattacharya | The English and Foreign Languages University (original) (raw)
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Papers by Baishakhi Bhattacharya
The objective of this dissertation is to examine representations of ‘identity’ in postcolonial Ba... more The objective of this dissertation is to examine representations of ‘identity’ in postcolonial Bangla fiction, and study the ways in which these negotiate with binarisms. The hegemony of certain ‘established categories’ and ‘fundamental oppositions’ upon contemporary representational strategies cannot be denied. These binarisms train us to polarise ‘identity’. Difference is reified, and homogeneity is forced upon a ‘culturally diverse’ nation in the name of ‘political unity’. On the other hand, the different ways in which individuals experience ‘postcoloniality’ refuse to give in to definitive categorisations of social identity. The ‘identity’ of a postcolonial Indian is the contentious product of an unequal cultural exchange and a troubled synthesis. Multi-dimensional reflections of this are contained in postcolonial fiction.
This dissertation concentrates specifically on community and gender identity, and also explores fictional descriptions of socio-political resistance to investigate whether binaries are undermined here. The configuration of the Bangalee (Bengali) ‘identity’ is first explored through a Bangla historical novel. The ways in which representations of lived experience ‘resist’ this undifferentiated abstract ‘identity’ are noted. Next, certain binarisms like masculinity-femininity, public-private, etc. are probed to reflect on strategies and practices of representing gender in fiction. A set of novels by a popular mid-twentieth century female novelist is used to see how the ‘identity’ of the Bangalee bhadramahila was hegemonically imagined, and investigate the impact this has on the representation of their real lives. Finally, fictional representations of two resistance movements in Bengal are read to uncover reuse of the language of dominance. Alongside the critique of stereotypical inversions, ‘other’ kinds of resistances are also examined.
In a nation that still carries residues of its colonial past, the relation of both the writer and the reader with English is a troubled one. Studies of native language texts, when allowed to intersect the hegemonic domain of English literature, could open up concealed dimensions of the colonial encounter, or other ways of representing it. The rich history of cultural exchange embedded in Bangla, and the mixture of pre-colonial and colonial traditions in it, makes it ideal for a contrapuntal engagement with representations of ‘postcolonial identity’ in fiction. This has enabled the dissertation to examine the specific histories behind certain predetermined notions and cultural stereotypes. Expected responses to the novels have been unpacked to expose concealed nuances and gaps in the text.
Dr. Arvind Nawale, ed. Panorama of World Literature, May 2012
As a transcultural author, Jhumpa Lahiri situates her characters in a space in-between cultures. ... more As a transcultural author, Jhumpa Lahiri situates her characters in a space in-between cultures. It is common for such an author to be simultaneously praised for speaking on behalf of ‘her people’ and condemned for not being representative enough. Thus the ascription of ‘location’ upon Lahiri effects her reading. This paper looks at how attempts to place Lahiri within the world of English literatures intervene into the ways in which we read her. For a writer of international renown like Lahiri, the powerful international market and the review circuit in London and New York are already and authoritatively telling the ‘ordinary’ reader what to make of her ‘much-awaited’ books even before they are actually read. Do these reviews make the author familiar and predict the ways in which we respond to her? As her success is appropriated from different locations how do readers of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds react to her? Attempts to ‘locate’ and describe a author like Jhumpa Lahiri has specific ideological foundations, and these mediate the responses of readers by affecting the assumptions and expectations they bring to their readings.
Conference Presentations by Baishakhi Bhattacharya
What does the term homeland signify to a person who is obliged to migrate or is forcefully displa... more What does the term homeland signify to a person who is obliged to migrate or is forcefully displaced from the land of her/his birth? What happens when such displacement is read alongside emotions of traumatic loss, pain, guilt, and an inability to return? In my paper I propose to look at the ways in which different characters of the Bangla novel Purbo-Poschim (1988) invoke varied images of Desh (homeland), and grapple with the multitudinous emotions these images and the memories associated with them raise.
Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Purbo-Poschim (East-West) is about boundaries – between nations, between cultures, between geographical territories – and about people who are forced to live through the loss of their homeland, and the struggle of trying to reconstruct a new home while learning to cope with disturbing memories of what they once had. The novel, set in post-Partition Bengal, documents the socio-political turmoil faced by Bengali people on both sides of the border during the later half of the twentieth century. Displacement is a critical motif in this novel, represented through the violent uprooting and exodus of population that Bengal witnessed after the Partition of 1947, which not only divided British-occupied territory into India and Pakistan, but struck closer home in Bengali consciousness by breaking up this (mostly singular) ethno-culturally tied community into two nations that visualized each other as enemies.
Space, in the language of the modern nation-state, has to be officially defined and classified in terms of settlement and property, and boundaries have to be drawn between spaces and the kinds of people to be located within/ without these spaces have to be identified/ stigmatized. The rhetoric of modern development depends upon the regulation and management of these spaces/ boundaries by the state. Displacement of large groups of people, and their migration and re-settlement is thus articulated as an administrative ‘problem’ in official language, and state intervention is marked. Within such a discourse there appears to be very little scope for an engagement with the multiple and complex ways in which people identity a certain territory as home, the affective relations (including questions of social status, kinship ties, etc) associated with it, and the processes of change these relations undergo.
Purbo-Poschim reveals several strands of emotive engagement with a lost homeland. Primarily there is a nostalgic reconstruction of a congenial space where harmonious co-existence of currently hostile communities was once possible, and where economic stability was common. Connected with this is a desire to return home, to rediscover a sense of belonging and of continuity that was lost with displacement from the homeland. Parallely there is the painful realization of the impossibility of such a return. Secondly, there is a certain desperate longing to own land – ownership that is supposed to confer new rights upon the displaced populace otherwise identified as ‘outsiders’. Acquisition of land in the new home gains a different meaning when it is associated with the right to citizenship. Finally, there is a problematic engagement with questions of loyalty. Where the nation is demarcated by geographical boundaries, longing for home is often associated with feelings of anxiety, guilt, and blame.
Through these engagements of a displaced people with reconstructed memories of a lost homeland, efforts to create a new one, and the complex and changing relations with Desh represented in the novel I propose to make a nuanced reading of territorial attachment.
The objective of this dissertation is to examine representations of ‘identity’ in postcolonial Ba... more The objective of this dissertation is to examine representations of ‘identity’ in postcolonial Bangla fiction, and study the ways in which these negotiate with binarisms. The hegemony of certain ‘established categories’ and ‘fundamental oppositions’ upon contemporary representational strategies cannot be denied. These binarisms train us to polarise ‘identity’. Difference is reified, and homogeneity is forced upon a ‘culturally diverse’ nation in the name of ‘political unity’. On the other hand, the different ways in which individuals experience ‘postcoloniality’ refuse to give in to definitive categorisations of social identity. The ‘identity’ of a postcolonial Indian is the contentious product of an unequal cultural exchange and a troubled synthesis. Multi-dimensional reflections of this are contained in postcolonial fiction.
This dissertation concentrates specifically on community and gender identity, and also explores fictional descriptions of socio-political resistance to investigate whether binaries are undermined here. The configuration of the Bangalee (Bengali) ‘identity’ is first explored through a Bangla historical novel. The ways in which representations of lived experience ‘resist’ this undifferentiated abstract ‘identity’ are noted. Next, certain binarisms like masculinity-femininity, public-private, etc. are probed to reflect on strategies and practices of representing gender in fiction. A set of novels by a popular mid-twentieth century female novelist is used to see how the ‘identity’ of the Bangalee bhadramahila was hegemonically imagined, and investigate the impact this has on the representation of their real lives. Finally, fictional representations of two resistance movements in Bengal are read to uncover reuse of the language of dominance. Alongside the critique of stereotypical inversions, ‘other’ kinds of resistances are also examined.
In a nation that still carries residues of its colonial past, the relation of both the writer and the reader with English is a troubled one. Studies of native language texts, when allowed to intersect the hegemonic domain of English literature, could open up concealed dimensions of the colonial encounter, or other ways of representing it. The rich history of cultural exchange embedded in Bangla, and the mixture of pre-colonial and colonial traditions in it, makes it ideal for a contrapuntal engagement with representations of ‘postcolonial identity’ in fiction. This has enabled the dissertation to examine the specific histories behind certain predetermined notions and cultural stereotypes. Expected responses to the novels have been unpacked to expose concealed nuances and gaps in the text.
Dr. Arvind Nawale, ed. Panorama of World Literature, May 2012
As a transcultural author, Jhumpa Lahiri situates her characters in a space in-between cultures. ... more As a transcultural author, Jhumpa Lahiri situates her characters in a space in-between cultures. It is common for such an author to be simultaneously praised for speaking on behalf of ‘her people’ and condemned for not being representative enough. Thus the ascription of ‘location’ upon Lahiri effects her reading. This paper looks at how attempts to place Lahiri within the world of English literatures intervene into the ways in which we read her. For a writer of international renown like Lahiri, the powerful international market and the review circuit in London and New York are already and authoritatively telling the ‘ordinary’ reader what to make of her ‘much-awaited’ books even before they are actually read. Do these reviews make the author familiar and predict the ways in which we respond to her? As her success is appropriated from different locations how do readers of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds react to her? Attempts to ‘locate’ and describe a author like Jhumpa Lahiri has specific ideological foundations, and these mediate the responses of readers by affecting the assumptions and expectations they bring to their readings.
What does the term homeland signify to a person who is obliged to migrate or is forcefully displa... more What does the term homeland signify to a person who is obliged to migrate or is forcefully displaced from the land of her/his birth? What happens when such displacement is read alongside emotions of traumatic loss, pain, guilt, and an inability to return? In my paper I propose to look at the ways in which different characters of the Bangla novel Purbo-Poschim (1988) invoke varied images of Desh (homeland), and grapple with the multitudinous emotions these images and the memories associated with them raise.
Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Purbo-Poschim (East-West) is about boundaries – between nations, between cultures, between geographical territories – and about people who are forced to live through the loss of their homeland, and the struggle of trying to reconstruct a new home while learning to cope with disturbing memories of what they once had. The novel, set in post-Partition Bengal, documents the socio-political turmoil faced by Bengali people on both sides of the border during the later half of the twentieth century. Displacement is a critical motif in this novel, represented through the violent uprooting and exodus of population that Bengal witnessed after the Partition of 1947, which not only divided British-occupied territory into India and Pakistan, but struck closer home in Bengali consciousness by breaking up this (mostly singular) ethno-culturally tied community into two nations that visualized each other as enemies.
Space, in the language of the modern nation-state, has to be officially defined and classified in terms of settlement and property, and boundaries have to be drawn between spaces and the kinds of people to be located within/ without these spaces have to be identified/ stigmatized. The rhetoric of modern development depends upon the regulation and management of these spaces/ boundaries by the state. Displacement of large groups of people, and their migration and re-settlement is thus articulated as an administrative ‘problem’ in official language, and state intervention is marked. Within such a discourse there appears to be very little scope for an engagement with the multiple and complex ways in which people identity a certain territory as home, the affective relations (including questions of social status, kinship ties, etc) associated with it, and the processes of change these relations undergo.
Purbo-Poschim reveals several strands of emotive engagement with a lost homeland. Primarily there is a nostalgic reconstruction of a congenial space where harmonious co-existence of currently hostile communities was once possible, and where economic stability was common. Connected with this is a desire to return home, to rediscover a sense of belonging and of continuity that was lost with displacement from the homeland. Parallely there is the painful realization of the impossibility of such a return. Secondly, there is a certain desperate longing to own land – ownership that is supposed to confer new rights upon the displaced populace otherwise identified as ‘outsiders’. Acquisition of land in the new home gains a different meaning when it is associated with the right to citizenship. Finally, there is a problematic engagement with questions of loyalty. Where the nation is demarcated by geographical boundaries, longing for home is often associated with feelings of anxiety, guilt, and blame.
Through these engagements of a displaced people with reconstructed memories of a lost homeland, efforts to create a new one, and the complex and changing relations with Desh represented in the novel I propose to make a nuanced reading of territorial attachment.