BOOK REVIEW: Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Joshua Moufawad-Paul Methods Devour Themselves: A Conversation (original) (raw)
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In-Between Fiction and Non-Fiction Introduction
Cambridge Scholars, 2018
This volume invites the reader to join in with the recent focus on subjectivity and self-reflection, as the means of understanding and engaging with the social and historical changes in the world through storytelling. It examines the symbiosis between anthropology and fiction, on the one hand, by looking at various ways in which the two fields co-emerge in a fruitful manner, and, on the other, by re-examining their political, aesthetic, and social relevance to world history. Following the intellectual crisis of the 1970s, anthropology has been criticized for losing its ethnographic authority and vocation. However, as a consequence of this, ethnographic scope has opened towards more subjective and self-reflexive forms of knowledge and representations, such as the crossing of the boundaries between autobiography and ethnography. The collection of essays re-introduces the importance of authorship in relationship to readership, making a ground-breaking move towards the study of fictional texts and images as cultural, sociological, and political reflections of the time and place in which they were produced. In this way, the contributors here contribute to the widening of the ethnographic scope of contemporary anthropology. A number of the chapters were presented as papers in two conferences organised by the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, entitled “Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world” (2012), and at the University of Exeter, entitled “Symbiotic Anthropologies” (2015). Each chapter offers a unique method of working in the grey area between and beyond the categories of fiction and non-fiction, while creatively reflecting upon current methodological, ethical, and theoretical issues, in anthropology and cultural studies. This is an important book for undergraduate and post-graduate students of anthropology, cultural and media studies, art theory, and creative writing, as well as academic researchers in these fields.
alternative versions of history.These novels can be viewed as double voiced discourses where dominant voices of history are refracted through subversion and provide space to other voices that have been suppressed. The texts are analyzed with respect to their use of different voices through the novelists " emphasis on how history is a human construct and how they highlight the silenced histories of the marginalized groups. I argue that it is in these works of fiction that much of the suppressed history of marginalized people has been recorded; untold stories are told from the experiences of those who were involved in events, rather than from the objective perspective conjectured by the historian. The hypothesis of this research project is that novels also offer crucial insights in understanding historyand it is assumed that a literary text is coterminous with history, and it is intertextual.An analysis of these literary texts allows a scope for rethinking and re-reading different versions of history.In documenting the evidences in this thesis, I have followedthe MLA style sheet of the seventh edition, 2009. To support my analysis Ihave referred to the views of scholars who have worked on the partition such as RanjitGuha, Pandey, Jill Didur, ParthChatterjee, MushirulHasan, Veena Das, RituMenon, KamlaBhasin, Joe Cleary and others to argue how these novels destabilize the hegemony of mainstream and official narratives of the catastrophic event of the partition.The study is divided into six chapters. Chapter I.Introduction: Representation of the partition, history and the Novel This chapter serves as an introduction to the question of representation of the partition event.Literature is an important source of history as accounts of creative writings are testimonies of the marginal voices and memories. Among the various literary forms, the connection of the novel with history has been the closest. However, there has been constant evolution in the nature and scope of the novelist " s engagement with history and vice versa too. The novel established its base by imitating history: it progressed by making massive use of history, incorporating within the fictional frame a large number of social, political and
Voices of Oppression, Protest and Assertion: A Study of the Selected Novels of Mulk Raj Anand and Ngugi wa Thiong’o ABSTRACT This dissertation is mainly concerned in projecting the prevailing social evils of Indian society and the socio-political evils that restrain the African society from development and modernity. The purpose of selecting the title and the novels serves the social betterment by stimulating the humanitarian emotion of every individual to act and take his/her part in the society. This thesis starts with the historical background of both the Indian and the African novel in English, then a methodically study of the theories which are applied in it and the many solutions that are offered by the authors to the existing problems of their societies. The voices of oppression, which the title starts with are clearly illustrated through the four chapters apart from the introduction and the conclusion. The many attempts of protests are in the four selected novels which are Untouchable, Coolie, Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, have been traced and shed light on through this study. Finally, the many solutions as referred to in the title as Assertion are offered in the concluding paragraphs of each chapter. This study is mainly based on the theoretical conception of two major schools which both of the authors belong to. They are the social realism and the socialist realism. As regarding Realism in literature, it is an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity. Although realism is not limited to any one century or group of writers, it is most often associated with the literary movement in 19th century France, specifically with the French novelists Flaubert and Balzac. George Eliot introduced realism into England and William Dean Howells introduced it into the United States. Realism has been chiefly concerned with the commonplaces of everyday life among the middle and lower classes, where character is a product of social factors and environment is the integral element in the dramatic complications in literature, an approach that proceeds from an analysis of reality in terms of natural forces. Realism is a style of writing that gives the impression of recording faithfully an actual way of life without any idealization. The social novel is concerned with the influence of societal organizations and of economic and social conditions on characters and events. The purpose of this type of a novel is to educate the people of the necessity for changing their morality, their lives and the social institutions. This research is concerned with the social novel and one of its most important advocates is Mulk Raj Anand who is mainly a social realist protesting against man-made anti-human institutions. He reveals keen concern in the eradication of social evils and his novels are only artistic attempts to provoke the lethargic conscience of the people and stimulate them to remove these evils. In his fiction, he always takes the most important burning problems of the community as his starting point; his pathos as a writer is always stimulated by the sufferings of his people, which are the most acute at the time; it is these sufferings that determine the objects and direction of his love and hate. Realistic fiction has been primarily a revolt against the sentimentality of romantic idealism. As the settings of the selected novels of Untouchable and Coolie, prove to be more ordinary, as they deal with existent commonplace events and actual people; they present unpleasant and even offensive subject matter. This repugnant quality is especially associated with ‘Naturalism’ which is an outgrowth of realism. The purpose of Anand to portray every aspect of the life of his characters is to change their existing reality. Anand proves to be socialist leader of his time and society. He considers that the only real literature is the expression of the historically developing nation spirit, the dialectic movement of the political and economic idea. That movement provides a norm for distinguishing between the eternal and the temporary in literature. So, the greatest author is most closely identified with the community and its evolution, one who divines the need of one’s time, expresses its spirit, and represents his contemporaries. The social realists believe in the power of the word and in the writer’s ability to portray in truthful details all aspects of life. This fashioned the structure of social reality. On the other side, there is Socialist realism, which means the depiction of the social reality not as it is but as it should be idealized. This kind of approach is typical Marxist approach to literature. The theory of Socialist Realism was adopted by the Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Approved by Joseph Stalin, Nickolai Bukharin, Maxim Gorky and Andrey Zhdanov. Socialist Realism demands that all art must depict some aspect of man's struggle toward socialist progress for a better life. It stresses the need for the creative artist to serve the proletariat by being realistic, optimistic and heroic. The doctrine considers all forms of experimentalism as degenerate and pessimistic. Socialist realism has its roots in neoclassicism and the traditions of realism in Russian literature of the 19th century that describes the life of simple people. The very basis of socialist realism is the desire to probe into the future to portray from the inside people on their march to build their future through revolutionary acts. Mulk Raj Anand belongs to this category through his observation. It is his view that writer should observe inner and outer parts of life and try to feel the present state of mind of mass. In his view “The novel should interpret the truth of life from felt experience, and not from books”. The same view is carried by the Socialist African novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o who is committed to the struggle against neocolonialism and imperialism as he employs Marxist theory in his novels which puts man in the center of his philosophy. Ngugi argues in his novels that man is the one who changes the material forces and in this course he changes himself . Marxist criticism is an approach to literature that focuses on the ideological content of a work. Marxist criticism, based largely on the writings of Karl Marx, typically aims at not only revealing and clarifying ideological issues but also correcting social injustices. Ngugi uses Marxist approach in his novels to describe the competing socio-economic interests that too often advance capitalist interests such as money and power rather than socialist interests such as morality and justice. As he argues that literature and literary criticism are essentially political because they either challenge or support economic oppression. This is why his novels have the socio-political facet rather than the social one. Ngugi advocates in his novels Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross that communism is the best solution for the proletariat to gain their assertion which is attained by going back to their cultural values and roots that glorify the principle of fighting for a communal goal. This study has the conclusion that both of Ngugi and Anand’s literature is educative and meant for the betterment of their people; hence it gains credibility to the Marxist principles. Both of the authors have faith in the individual’s ability no matter if s/he is an untouchable, a worker, a peasant, a whore or a coolie, everyone has a role in his/ her society to be accomplished and fulfilled.
Informasi, 2019
The socio-political fiction novel is generally realistic and gives an implicit picture of the social environment of a place. This type of reading is less popular because it is difficult to interpret and is also of less interest to readers than other literature. One of the works that can reflect this literary type is the novel entitled "Orang-Orang Proyek" by Ahmad Tohari, which represents the real condition of the Indonesian community under their politic and social circumstances. This paper tries to break down the literary work using the deconstructive-reading method to read a text with multi-interpretation understanding where the version contains many probabilities of meaning. This study will be able to provide insight into the correct reading method according to the purpose and type of literacy used in literary works. Novel fiksi sosial-politik umumnya realistis dan memberikan gambaran implisit tentang lingkungan sosial suatu tempat. Jenis bacaan ini kurang populer karena sulit untuk ditafsirkan dan juga kurang menarik bagi pembaca daripada literatur lainnya. Salah satu karya yang dapat mencerminkan jenis sastra ini adalah novel berjudul "Orang-Orang Proyek" oleh Ahmad Tohari, yang mewakili kondisi nyata masyarakat Indonesia di bawah kondisi sosial dan politik mereka. Makalah ini mencoba untuk memecah karya sastra menggunakan metode membaca dekonstruktif untuk membaca teks dengan pemahaman multi-interpretasi di mana representasi mengandung banyak kemungkinan makna. Penelitian ini akan dapat memberikan wawasan tentang metode membaca yang benar sesuai dengan tujuan dan jenis literasi yang digunakan dalam karya sastra.
Chapter 1. Theoretical Perspectives: Genre
This thesis is concerned with the novel, and specifically with how the novel is recognisable as a certain kind of meaning-the kind of meaning known to literary theorists as genre. To say that genre is a kind of meaning is to infer that it shapes linguistic meaning in the broad sense that I have given thus far, for genre can indeed be said to both enhance and constrain meaning in these terms (Frow Genre 10). Thus a statement in a novel, although it will have the same linguistic value that it possesses in ordinary usage, will have the additional meaning described by the term "fiction"; and this additional meaning value will both limit and direct the inferences that follow from the utterance. Situation-as an integral relation of space and time-is important because such enhancements will include presumptions founded on conventions not ordinarily required for everyday speech and writing where the utterance is unmediated and the speakers are phenomenally known or knowable. These conventions will position the utterance as deriving from a character in the novel, or the narrator, rather than the author of the work overall. Such distinctions are primarily spatiotemporal: although the coherence of the novel's statements will be critically attributable to the writer, these are mediated through different "persons"-they come to us via the fictive speakers of the novel. The four key metaphors identified in the title to this thesis are the kinds of meaning that are mediated in the novel to create this effect, which is the sense of a space and time that is other than the conditions in which the novel was written. Mediation of these terms occurs in a variety of genres but it is in particular the novel which achieves this effect through the elaboration and transformation of ordinary styles of speech. Indeed, the construction of fictive eventfulness is possible because all meaning is metaphoric when added to the world through speech; for speech represents a likeness to the phenomenal aspect without being the same as that aspect: meaning is not material, in other words, but a conceptual aspect correlating to the phenomenal. This realisation underpins post-Saussurean semiologie and post-Peircean semiotics; 1 but in this thesis
Analyzing World Fiction: New Horizons in Narrative Theory, 2011
In 2011, Frederick Aldama published a critical anthology entitled Analyzing World Fiction: New Horizons in Narrative Theory. This is the Afterword to that collection. About the book: Why are many readers drawn to stories that texture ethnic experiences and identities other than their own? How do authors such as Salman Rushdie and Maxine Hong Kingston, or filmmakers in Bollywood or Mexico City produce complex fiction that satisfies audiences worldwide? In Analyzing World Fiction, fifteen renowned luminaries use tools of narratology and insights from cognitive science and neurobiology to provide answers to these questions and more. With essays ranging from James Phelan's "Voice, Politics, and Judgments in Their Eyes Were Watching God" and Hilary Dannenberg's "Narrating Multiculturalism in British Media: Voice and Cultural Identity in Television" to Ellen McCracken's exploration of paratextual strategies in Chicana literature, this expansive collection turns the tide on approaches to postcolonial and multicultural phenomena that tend to compress author and narrator, text and real life. Striving to celebrate the art of fiction, the voices in this anthology explore the "ingredients" that make for powerful, universally intriguing, deeply human story-weaving. Systematically synthesizing the tools of narrative theory along with findings from the brain sciences to analyze multicultural and postcolonial film, literature, and television, the contributors pioneer new techniques for appreciating all facets of the wonder of storytelling. William Nericcio. “How This Book Reads You: Looking Beyond New Horizons in the Analysis of World Narrative Fiction,” in New Horizons in the Analysis of World Narrative Fiction, Frederick Aldama, editor (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 269-276.
Fiction as Method - Introduction
Fiction as Method, 2017
See the world through the eyes of a search engine, if only for a millisecond; throw the workings of power into sharper relief by any media necessary; reveal access points to other worlds within our own. In the anthology Fiction as Method, a mixture of new and established names in the fields of contemporary art, media theory, philosophy, and speculative fiction explore the diverse ways fiction manifests, and provide insights into subjects ranging from the hive mind of the art collective 0rphan Drift to the protocols of online self-presentation. With an extended introduction by the editors, the book invites reflection on how fictions proliferate, take on flesh, and are carried by a wide variety of mediums—including, but not limited to, the written word. In each case, fiction is bound up with the production and modulation of desire, the enfolding of matter and meaning, and the blending of practices that cast the existing world in a new light with those that participate in the creation of new openings of the possible.
A New Reality, A New Genre of Literature (2017)
When seen from the perspective of soul, literature reveals itself as psyche’s other. By this I mean that psyche reflects its self-movement in literature. The intimate relationship between psyche and language has only been discovered around the 18th or 19th centuries when an explosion of interest in the phenomenon of language occurred. But this intimate relationship has always been so, although unrecognized as such, until consciousness was able to “perceive” language as a phenomenon, distinct from natural phenomena. … We are now in a time of a transformation in the configuration of consciousness-world and, correspondingly, new genres of literature are in the process of forming—genres that may one day reflect and articulate the psyche as newly re-configured…. With this catastrophic psychic transformation in mind, we must ask what genre of literature can express, articulate and manifest movement as is now privileged by the psyche so that new cultural practices may come into being and new contours of the world may be perceived. The first part of this essay concerns my efforts towards finding such a genre as I personally underwent the catastrophe of the collapse of opposites, and the second part addresses some very interesting and relevant work occurring throughout the literary world, which I believe is heading in the same direction as my own efforts.