Stuti Khanna | Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (original) (raw)
Papers by Stuti Khanna
Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2011
This article examines the ways in which the fact of writing about the postcolonial city of Bombay... more This article examines the ways in which the fact of writing about the postcolonial city of Bombay inflects the language of Rushdie's novels. With specific reference to Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, the article proposes that a productive analysis of language in Rushdie can be made by replacing the unwieldy and diffuse category of Indian English with the more meaningful contextualization provided by the category of Bombay English. It goes on to argue that while Rushdie's "chutnified" language offers an enabling point of entry into the complex, multilayered and heterogeneous socioeconomic fabric of the Third World postcolonial city, it fails to tease out the relations of power and privilege that are intimately tied to the ways in which language, even a "chutnified" one, is deployed.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2009
Th is article undertakes an investigation of the fi gure of the artist in the fi ction of Salman ... more Th is article undertakes an investigation of the fi gure of the artist in the fi ction of Salman Rushdie. Th at most of his novels pivot around such a fi gure is surely signifi cant, as is the crucial importance of the city (of Bombay) in the formulation and development of their artistic credos and personae. 1 Th e postcolonial urban chronotope in and of which Rushdie writes is emblematic of the deep fi ssures and contradictions marking a third-world terrain. A study of the artist-fi gure in such a setting, as, indeed, the narrative requirement for one, is deeply revelatory. An analysis of the engagement between the artist and the city can, I argue, uncover the aporias of seizing upon the third-world city as artistic material, and prise open questions of representation, representability, individual subject-positions, and class-divides. Th e modalities, aspirations, and limitations of these arguably self-refl exive engagements with the city can tell as much about the artist in question as about the city from which her/his art is inseparable. 2 To a large extent, the artist becomes the prism, as well as the means, through which the city is negotiated in Rushdie's writings. As fi gures whose vocation allows them the artistic license to enter, probe, and represent the multifarious aspects of the life of the city, Rushdie's artists evince in their persons as well as in their art many of the contradictions that constitute the terrain of the city. Focusing on the narrator/writer Saleem in Midnight's Children, the photographer Rai in Th e Ground Beneath Her Feet, and the painter Aurora in Th e Moor's Last Sigh, this article demonstrates how the modernist (self-)conception of the artist as a somehow de-classed, detached, free-fl oating fi gure is immediately and irrevocably shattered in the fractured, confl icted terrain of the postcolonial city. I propose that the fi gure of the artist is the indispensable means by which Rushdie can begin to map the vastly disparate geographies
Books by Stuti Khanna
Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2011
This article examines the ways in which the fact of writing about the postcolonial city of Bombay... more This article examines the ways in which the fact of writing about the postcolonial city of Bombay inflects the language of Rushdie's novels. With specific reference to Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, the article proposes that a productive analysis of language in Rushdie can be made by replacing the unwieldy and diffuse category of Indian English with the more meaningful contextualization provided by the category of Bombay English. It goes on to argue that while Rushdie's "chutnified" language offers an enabling point of entry into the complex, multilayered and heterogeneous socioeconomic fabric of the Third World postcolonial city, it fails to tease out the relations of power and privilege that are intimately tied to the ways in which language, even a "chutnified" one, is deployed.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2009
Th is article undertakes an investigation of the fi gure of the artist in the fi ction of Salman ... more Th is article undertakes an investigation of the fi gure of the artist in the fi ction of Salman Rushdie. Th at most of his novels pivot around such a fi gure is surely signifi cant, as is the crucial importance of the city (of Bombay) in the formulation and development of their artistic credos and personae. 1 Th e postcolonial urban chronotope in and of which Rushdie writes is emblematic of the deep fi ssures and contradictions marking a third-world terrain. A study of the artist-fi gure in such a setting, as, indeed, the narrative requirement for one, is deeply revelatory. An analysis of the engagement between the artist and the city can, I argue, uncover the aporias of seizing upon the third-world city as artistic material, and prise open questions of representation, representability, individual subject-positions, and class-divides. Th e modalities, aspirations, and limitations of these arguably self-refl exive engagements with the city can tell as much about the artist in question as about the city from which her/his art is inseparable. 2 To a large extent, the artist becomes the prism, as well as the means, through which the city is negotiated in Rushdie's writings. As fi gures whose vocation allows them the artistic license to enter, probe, and represent the multifarious aspects of the life of the city, Rushdie's artists evince in their persons as well as in their art many of the contradictions that constitute the terrain of the city. Focusing on the narrator/writer Saleem in Midnight's Children, the photographer Rai in Th e Ground Beneath Her Feet, and the painter Aurora in Th e Moor's Last Sigh, this article demonstrates how the modernist (self-)conception of the artist as a somehow de-classed, detached, free-fl oating fi gure is immediately and irrevocably shattered in the fractured, confl icted terrain of the postcolonial city. I propose that the fi gure of the artist is the indispensable means by which Rushdie can begin to map the vastly disparate geographies