Anita Harris Satkunananthan | National University of Malaysia (original) (raw)

Papers by Anita Harris Satkunananthan

Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2020

Journal of language teaching, linguistics and literature, Dec 13, 2021

3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 2017

GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies, 2019

3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies

Both Sarah Kane’s Blasted and Helen Oyeyemi’s Juniper’s Whitening have frightening instances of t... more Both Sarah Kane’s Blasted and Helen Oyeyemi’s Juniper’s Whitening have frightening instances of theatrical violence which include infanticide. These instances are more overt in Blasted and are alluded to in Juniper’s Whitening. This article interrogates the instances of infanticide within both plays, connecting the violence to the child abuse and farcical infanticide in The Punch and Judy Show. The figure of the child is examined from the perspective of a symbol of civilisation corrupted from within and the murder of the child through the lens of Kristeva’s theory of abjection. The staged infanticide and the rapes present in both texts reflect shifting cultural norms in an increasingly multicultural Britain. The study of these two plays is both literary and dramaturgical; the casual brutality in Kane’s play with the psychological and insidious motifs in Oyeyemi’s work are compared with the motifs found in The Punch and Judy Show and then situated within the context of the In-yer-fac...

Pertanika journal of social science and humanities, 2016

Adrienne Kennedy, in her oeuvre, has addressed the intersecting complications of gender and race.... more Adrienne Kennedy, in her oeuvre, has addressed the intersecting complications of gender and race. Most of her plays have examined and explored the ways in which these categories are constructed in American society. Through her focus on the experience of African American female characters, Kennedy’s theatrical work has illuminated the ways in which African American women are doubly oppressed. From this perspective, Sarah of the Funnyhouse of a Negro presents one of the most significant issues discussed by contemporary African American literature, which is the intersectionality of oppression. Funnyhouse was written in 1964, and the theory of intersectionality was established in 1989. Therefore, investigating the play through the lens of intersectionality reflects that Funnyhouse had advanced the time in which it had been written. The present paper aims to illustrate alienation through the lens of intersectionality to examine oppression and suffering experienced by Sarah. To accomplish...

GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies

This study analyses the Malay folkloric trope of the Nenek Kebayan and how this supernatural figu... more This study analyses the Malay folkloric trope of the Nenek Kebayan and how this supernatural figure is connected to the Gothic trope of the haunted house in selected horror films. This study contends that the figure of the Nenek Kebayan is instrumental in the haunting effect of these homes. Three horror films have therefore been chosen to analyse the motif of the Nenek Kebayan and the haunted house which are Congkak (2005), Al-Hijab (2011) and additionally, the figure of the Nenek Kebayan is compared to the figure of the spectral Witch in The Conjuring (2013). In so doing, this study adapts the Structural Uncanny Haunted House Framework (SUHHF) as a theoretical framework. SUHHF is an Uncanny adaptation of Joshua Comaroff’s and Ong Ker-Shing’s concept of the architecture of horror. SUHHF focuses primarily on three aspects of the haunted house which are The Surmounted Corpse that provides insights to the external and internal layer of the house, The Hazardous Transition that explains ...

ABSTRAK Tujuan utama artikel ini adalah untuk membongkar pelbagai strategi seram yang terkandung ... more ABSTRAK Tujuan utama artikel ini adalah untuk membongkar pelbagai strategi seram yang terkandung di dalam filem seram berkonsepkan rumah hantu Malaysia dan Amerika Syarikat. Kewujudan rumah berhantu di alam nyata mampu menimbulkan rasa takut dalam kalangan penonton apabila mereka menonton filem seram. Ini adalah kerana, penggunaan latar rumah berhantu mempunyai beberapa motif, elemen dan aspek teknikal tertentu. Artikel ini ingin menjelaskan dengan lebih terperinci tentang makna uncanny untuk mengenalpasti akan kesannya terhadap filem-filem rumah hantu dari seleksi klasik dan juga yang terkini. Dengan menggunakan pendekatan teoretika, hubungan uncanny dan filem rumah hantu di Malaysia dan Amerika Syarikat dapatlah difokuskan. Berdasarkan theory uncanny Sigmund Freud, Andrew Bennett dan Nicholas Royle, dapatlah disenaraikan beberapa aspek yang mempunyai potensi seram yang kebiasaannya boleh mempengaruhi penghuni rumah hantu dan secara keseluruhannya aspek-aspek tersebut juga telah di...

Akademika, 2020

Boushra Al-Mutawakkil and Amira Alsharifare two of the most important Yemeni photographers; they ... more Boushra Al-Mutawakkil and Amira Alsharifare two of the most important Yemeni photographers; they are both pioneers in presenting facets of Yemeni women through photography. Their works are considered controversial because they present bold and challenging opinions concerning social taboos against women in terms of space of freedom and veiling. Dress codes in Yemen have always been a very sensitive topic for discussion since they are generally linked to religious roots and customary traditions. Through their photographs, Al-Mutawakkil and Alsharif attempt to show the changes in hijab-wearing that range from the elegant traditional Yemeni veil with its diverse designs to the monochromatic abaya, always black and shapeless, a costume imported from the Gulf countries where women’s individual identities slowly disappear. By sharply contrasting the traditional Yemeni costume, the black abaya, and various stages of veiling as women become increasingly invisible as they are shrouded in blac...

This dissertation offers a gendered, postcolonial Gothic reading with a central focus upon consid... more This dissertation offers a gendered, postcolonial Gothic reading with a central focus upon considering the complex relationship between authority and articulation in the fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Helen Oyeyemi. Both are writers of Nigerian origin who have lived in more than one country; their texts are hybrid, and contain conflicting cultural imperatives that are signposted through Gothic elements. The two authors studied in this dissertation have been categorised as belonging to the third-generation of Nigerian writers — but since they are cosmopolitan women who have lived in more than one country, the condition of transit and of drawing from more than one corpus of literature imbues their texts. I argue that the fluidity that arises from the condition of writing from the in-between spaces of transit contributes to the sense of the uncanny that fuels the Gothic configurations of their texts. I then posit that the relationship between authority and articulation — often one of struggle and conflict for women given the persistence of patriarchal ideologies — is connected to the metaphoric representations of doubling and of splitting, and to the figures of twins, doubles and doppelgangers that pervade the texts of both authors. I link these metaphoric and thematic representations to postcolonial readings of mimicry in relation to hybridity. In so doing, I examine the manner in which doubling relates to the uncanny in Adichie’s and Oyeyemi’s writings. The sense of the uncanny is produced by the unsettling feeling of being in-between; I have named instances of this in the texts, “liminal dissonances and doublings”. These effects are a direct result of metaphors and themes found in the narratives that evoke haunting and loss, as well as the gendered transgressions which are often necessary in the struggle for articulation. I connect these metaphors, enclosures and psychological configurations of the Gothic to instances of transgression in the texts. I then investigate these diverse representations of transgression, connecting these representations to issues that pertain to identity. I discuss the manner in which these transgressions are a response to instances of commodification that are implied or directly addressed in the texts, and the manner in which this commodification is related to the struggle to assert one’s personal autonomy against public expectations of one’s cultural identity. My literary exploration of the relationship between articulation and authority and the pervasive metaphors of doubling, dissonance and splitting in the texts of the two writers is organised into five topic areas. In Chapter One, I interrogate the position of Adichie and Oyeyemi within the postcolonial Gothic in relation to their identities as third-generation Nigerian writers, by examining the discourse of desire in the texts as well as how cultural identity is fetishised and commodified. Implicit in the argument of this chapter is not just the function of memory, but also the manner in which authority contributes to and often interrupts the discourse of identity — particularly for writers who are in-between cultures. I examine this argument in relation to the concepts of desire and objectification from a Gothic perspective. Next, in Chapter Two, I delve into the Gothic Otherworlds in Oyeyemi’s texts, and consider the manner in which these are linked to the complicated relationships between women of different generations in the same family. I connect this to the theme of authority, looking at the manner in which Oyeyemi transforms and syncretises the Yorùbá motif of the abiku, combining it with Western/Greco-Roman motifs; Gothic literature as well as fairytales. Adichie’s fiction is the concern of Chapter Three; I connect what I have termed the Biafran Haunting to the gazes of dominant or authoritative figures upon fetishised characters situated in the feminine domain. I study the enclosures of the Gothic and the grotesque in relation to the feminine, connecting the enclosures and the figures to the issue of mimicry. In Chapter Four, I relate the Gothic and mythic metaphors and thematic concerns in the narratives to my theoretical account of the Gothic; I link the twins, doppelgangers and doubles in the texts of both writers to postcolonial engagements with hybridity, mimicry, commodification and authority by examining the connection between doubling and splitting in these texts. Finally, in Chapter Five, I look at the struggle for articulation and voicing in the texts; how this is often related, in particular, to metaphors of choking and consumption (of food or other material), and the manner in which these metaphors connect to the commodification of the experience of individuals inhabiting the highly ambiguous and problematic in-between.

Lady Macbeth’s Daughter by Lisa Klein is a young adult novel that re-visions the storyline of Wil... more Lady Macbeth’s Daughter by Lisa Klein is a young adult novel that re-visions the storyline of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Klein’s text introduces the female voice and perspectives on the power struggle of men wanting to become King of Scotland. She also increases the supernatural elements in her novel, linking nature and the supernatural to the feminine element of life and being. This paper closely analyses and compares two different corpora, the original text and the re-visioned text, in analysing Lady Macbeth and her daughter, Albia’s, desire for revenge from the female perspective by looking at their agency and their longing for masculinity. Through comparative analysis of both the novel and the play, the researcher finds that Lady Macbeth views a crime such as murder as a reflection of manhood. Therefore, she desires to have this masculine characteristic although she lacks agency in completing the task. Albia does not appear to need this sense of masculinity as she has a stro...

3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 2017

In this article, we attempt to unravel the family-based haunted house film patterns in both Malay... more In this article, we attempt to unravel the family-based haunted house film patterns in both Malaysia and America. Certain types of tropes and attributes have been used by horror filmmakers over the years to define the family motif-pattern of haunted houses in the media. Some of these elements have undergone change over time but most of them still adhere to the rules that constitute the family-based haunted house film patterns based on two Malay films and two American films. These rules were compared and contrasted by applying a combination of two theories which were formulated by Propp and Bailey. Application of these formulas has resulted in the findings of twelve plot functions as examined in this article. Upon analysis of the corpus, it has also been found that there are 10 existing attributes of a haunted house. The findings suggest that the haunted house film pattern is not merely a motif but it is also able to exhibit a number of themes which are considered prominent in haunte...

Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairytale Studies, 2020

This essay interrogates the ways in which, through the mise en abyme narrative strategy in White ... more This essay interrogates the ways in which, through the mise en abyme narrative strategy in White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi and White as Snow by Tanith Lee, various tropes from the Grimm and Disney retellings of "Snow White" are related to the mythic descent to the Underworld, known as the Hellenic katabasis (κατάβασις). Findings reveal that the connection between the mise en abyme refractive narrative strategy and the trope of the katabasis is deployed differently by the two authors to examine trauma in relation to age, gender, and dominant racial discourses.

SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English, 2020

Yangsze Choo's The Ghost Bride, which was a finalist for the 2014 Mythopoeic Awards, has recently... more Yangsze Choo's The Ghost Bride, which was a finalist for the 2014 Mythopoeic Awards, has recently enjoyed renewed success owing to the Netflix serial based on its premise. The novel takes place in a liminal world populated by Chinese ghosts, Gods and demons. Cassandra Khaw's short story "Some Breakable Things", on the other hand, provides a painful and intimate look at loss and bereavement while utilising the Hungry Ghost as a metaphor. A postcolonial feminist reading of Derrida's theory of hauntology will be applied to my construction and coining of a Malaysian Chinese Domestic Gothic to interrogate and contextualize the hybrid and transnational nature of these texts, which are a palimpsest of Western Gothic traditions and diasporic Chinese funerary customs. The texts' recreation and re-visioning of these traditional beliefs and customs display the interstitial dilemma of transnational travellers and diasporic individuals who have to constantly negotiate between consent, autonomy and inherited nostalgia. This article will interrogate these narrative palimpsests to unearth how these tales could provide an answer to the problematics of consent inherent in Derridean hauntology.

Kritika Kultura, 2019

This paper interrogates the connection between entities that hover in the liminal state between l... more This paper interrogates the connection between entities that hover in the liminal state between life and death (such as vampires and spirits) and the manner in which these entities relate to Alaya Dawn Johnson's conjurings of alternate political structures and hierarchies in her Spirit Binders series. Johnson's alternate hierarchies are compelling primarily because they are both flawed and liminal. These hierarchies contain gateways between life and death, between material reality and spiritual reality. An ecoGothic lens is applied to these texts as they deal with climate-related disasters and the ways in which the texts instigate not just heroism but also monstrosity. In Gothic fiction, supernatural tropes such as the Vampire, spirits, and intermediaries are often signposts towards psychological states such as Terror and its relation to the Sublime. In Gothic fiction, very often, vampires, spirits and other similar creatures are connected to a hierarchy or community of sorts. A postcolonial Gothic reading of Gothicized texts, however, interrogates the power relations, the sense of haunting underscoring the text as well as the discourse of Terror in relation to the Other. I argue that Johnson's writing enables the reader to peer in between the veils of life and death to unearth the darker sides of human nature, but very often these glimpses are not just about personal choices. These glimpses reveal strategies and missteps that guide the ways in which those hierarchies shape those choices, which Johnson then subverts in her tales.

Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2020

Journal of language teaching, linguistics and literature, Dec 13, 2021

3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 2017

GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies, 2019

3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies

Pertanika journal of social science and humanities, 2016

GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies

Akademika, 2020

3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 2017

Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairytale Studies, 2020

SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English, 2020

Kritika Kultura, 2019

From the perspective of the postcolonial female writer, articulation - the act of giving expressi... more From the perspective of the postcolonial female writer, articulation - the act of giving expression to one’s voice - can be problematised by opposing forces. This paper interrogates how speculative fiction, whether gothicised or within the context of a post-apocalyptic alternate reality, allows for the exploration and resolution of these forces. The novels studied will be Helen Oyeyemi's The Opposite House (2007) which sits in between genres and literary canons, as well as Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death( 2010), a post-apocalyptic and mythic journey that illustrates important issues surrounding femininity and empowerment. In both novels, the figure of the prophetess, mystic woman or seer is central, as are metaphors of doubling and travelling between space and time. I argue that these metaphors and symbols allows for better understanding of the hybrid states that contribute towards both empowerment and articulation within both postcolonial speculative fiction and postcolonial literature in general.

Letters to Tiptree is an intimate look at one of the most enigmatic writers in Science Fiction an... more Letters to Tiptree is an intimate look at one of the most enigmatic writers in Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) history. Alice Bradley Sheldon, as an SFF author who wrote under the male pseudonym James Tiptree Jr., received considerable acclaim and was feted as a visionary SFF writer. Her real life is, however, eminently more fascinating. Sheldon was a Major in the United States Army Air Forces and a spy working within the photo-intelligence unit. Sheldon was also an academic with a doctorate in experimental psychology. Her works reflect the complexity of the woman, and the letters are a testimony to the impact she had on scholars, authors and editors in the field. Along with Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ, Tiptree paved the way for many women SFF fans within the westernised canon of SFF who themselves became authors.
The main aim of the book under review is to facilitate a dialogue between active writers, editors and activists in the SFF field and the deceased Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr. This covers her impact on the field of SFF, the influence of her works and her legacy to the contributors to this
collection, and also commentaries on the issue of gender and feminism within the context of SFF.