Anil’s Ghost compels a reopening of the debate over literature’s relation to politics through it’s over preoccupation with a complex political backdrop, as well as a carefully articulated ambivalence about its project. Ondaatje’s decision to write a so-called political novel is obviously a deliberate one, and the critical responses to it have been unexpectedly diverse. The multiple analyses advanced by critics have specific implications for the evaluation of Sri Lankan fiction in particular and for postcolonial literatures in general. Over the last decade, Sri Lankan writing has been, for the most part, driven by politics, and Ondaatje’s intervention meets to be seen as a significant attempt to champion a particular stance. This paper argues that, far from biased, orientalist are otherwise irresponsible, Ondaatje’s novel charts new territory by establishing a careful balance between political engagement and aesthetic distance. That said, it can be argued that there is no real urgency to defend Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. Despite its political content and its provocative subject matter, it did not invite the kind of censorship …show more content…
The last few decades have been the golden age for postcolonial writers and several of those who achieved tremendous praise in the West have confronted this ambivalence. Anil’s Ghost, however, has a particular significance. Ondaatje’s Running in the Family was seen as a semi-autobiographical about a family. It did not remain unscathed as critics faulted it for various reasons, and even his brother Christopher Ondaatje had reason to express some measure of reservation about its portrayal of family history. On the whole, the personal nature of the narrative redeemed it. The English Patient was seen as the quintessential diasporic novel, and its internationalism was, given the displacement of the author,
In different ways, the novel’s narrated the construction of diasporic sensibility subjects effects a evaluation of the postcolonial nation-state without subscribing to a unified, one-world vision of global belonging.
Positionality refers to one’s social location or position within an intersecting web of socially constructed hierarchical groups, such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, and physical abilities. Different experiences, understanding, and knowledge of oneself and the world are gained, accessed, and produced based on one’s positionality (Sorrells). Standpoint theory emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a feminist critical theory about relations between the production of knowledge and practices of power (Harding, 2004). Ethnocentrism is a broad term which may apply to any social group and it mixes neatly with the social identity theory concept of in-group favoritism and refers to the way people identify themselves as
There is always a problem of historical inaccuracies in fiction. When certain historical events become a part of the narrative (especially when these events are controversial), it is important to understand what they mean in the author’s conception of history and reality in general. Far more important is to understand their place in this conception when we see that the author’s depiction of facts is unusual and what he does seems to be not the reflection of existing reality but the deconstruction of a different one. Terrorism, civil war, separatism – it is hard to remember the themes that would be more complicated and controversial in the modern world, because questions like these never have a certain answer. Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost is a good example of a novel that deals with the most important problems of contemporary history.
When it comes to post-colonial literature, most initially think about the colonization of other countries and how it has affected the natives. Though it is the most well known form of post-colonial literature, it is not the most wide-spread. By slightly altering the framing in which one looks at it, the idea that feminist literature by women from a patriarchal society is post-colonial literature begins to make sense.
In Richard Aldington’s novel, Death of a Hero, Aldington is forced to censor his novel due to inappropriate content. Aldington responded to this forced censorship by addressing it, using replacement words and using asterisks to replace passages that were censored. By not removing the censored pieces Aldington forces the reader to think, imagine and put themselves into the scenes of George’s life and the war, creating a more intimate and alive piece.
Gairola, Rahul. “Burning with Shame: Desire and South Asian Patriarchy, from Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ to Deepa Mehta’s Fire.” Comparative Literature 54:4 (Fall 2002). 307-324. EBSCOhost.
Truth can elucidate the multiple perspectives of a judgment. However, this may not be applicable in some cases, as the truth is indefinite. In the novel Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje writes about Sri Lanka’s political corruptions during the grievous civil war, allowing the multiple perceptions of truth to be expressed. Throughout this novel, Ondaatje illuminates the complexity of truth which persistently contrasts the subjectivity and objectivity of truth via the use of various voices. The composer’s portrayal of Anil’s perspective on truth reveals her objective acts during the investigation of sailor to derive the absolute truth, whereas her standpoint is juxtaposed with Palipana’s perspective on his version of the hypothetical truth.
Recent years have witnessed a large number of Indian English fiction writers who have stunned the literary world with their works. The topics dealt with are contemporary and populist and the English is functional, communicative and unpretentious. Novels have always served as a guide, a beacon in a conflicting, chaotic world and continue to do so. A careful study of Indian English fiction writers show that there are two kinds of writers who contribute to the genre of novels: The first group of writers include those who are global Indians, the diasporic writers, who are Indians by birth but have lived abroad, so they see Indian problems and reality objectively. The second group of writers are those born and brought up in India, exposed to the attitudes, morale and values of the society. Hence their works focus on the various social problems of India like the plight of women, unemployment, poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, rigid religious norms, inter caste marriages, breakdown of relationships etc.
The concept of orientalism refers to the western perceptions of the eastern cultures and social practices. It is a specific expose of the eurocentric universalism which takes for granted both, the superiority of what is European or western and the inferiority of what is not. Salman Rushdie's Booker of the Bookers prize winning novel Midnights Children is full of remarks and incidents that show the orientalist perception of India and its people. It is Rushdie's interpretation of a period of about 70 years in India's modern history dealing with the events leading to the partition and beyond. Rushdie is a fantasist and a creator of alternate realities, the poet and prophet of a generation born at the degree zero of national history. The present paper is an attempt to study how Salman Rushdie, being himself a writer of diasporic consciousness, sometimes perceives India and its people as orientalist stereotypes and presents them in a derogatory manner.
... Pakistan to surrender during the Indo-Pakistani War helped the Bengalis establish a sovereign state for themselves. The distribution of the racist pamphlets against the minorities showed Shiv Sena's chauvinistic and fascist regime. Indira Gandhi's corrupt government, socialist regime and her controversial scandals such as giving her son's company government money and the 1971 Nagarwala scandal were also revealed. All of these political events influenced the background of the novel and the characters’ everyday lives. .
Nevertheless, there are several themes running through the novel which constitute elements of post-colonial discourse, and this page intends to briefly examine some of them.
The format of the book is that of a speculative mythology thriller based in contemporary Ayodhya, Mithila and Lanka. It has been almost a decade since Sita has mysteriously disappeared from Ayodhya, leaving it an intolerably repressive kingdom, where dark secrets lie beneath the veneer of the glorious ‘Ayodhya Shining’. Peppered with many parallels to contemporary socio-political conditions in India, the book makes intelligent comments about vital issues like land dispossession, a biased media, the government-corporate nexus, terrorism, state surveillance, intolerance, manipulation of ‘history’ and of course, misogyny. Amidst all this, our unnamed narrator journalist develops an obsession for searching for Sita which becomes a metaphorical journey for hunting out the truth. Along the way, she comes across rebels and the misrepresented, like Kaikeyi, Shoorpanakha and Sam Boo Kha, who shed very different light on the official version of Ayodhya’s story, though we are also indirectly cautioned against taking all their words at face value. An elderly, decrepit Kaikeyi in the prologue to the novel remarks, “…me, Kausalya, Sita—all we’ll ever be are villains or footnotes in history textbooks” (19). To redeem such women, the novel carries the testimonies of several of them, forging an unlikely bond between them through a story that otherwise thrusts them apart. Thus, a feel-good story slowly unravels to reveal its cracks and fissures until a new one emerges, bitter but more
Postcolonial authors use their literature and poetry to solidify, through criticism and celebration, an emerging national identity, which they have taken on the responsibility of representing. Surely, the reevaluation of national identity is an eventual and essential result of a country gaining independence from a colonial power, or a country emerging from a fledgling settler colony. However, to claim to be representative of that entire identity is a huge undertaking for an author trying to convey a postcolonial message. Each nation, province, island, state, neighborhood and individual is its own unique amalgamation of history, culture, language and tradition. Only by understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process.
One of the principle concepts of Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’s “Writers in Politics: A Re-Engagement with Issues of Literature & Society” lies in the idea of cultural imperialism. This strategy of mind control through culture serves to secure economic and political occupation, and, specifically in the case of colonial Kenya, force a people to see the world through the eyes of the West rather than experiencing an original interpretation more focused on one’s own social conditions. Ngũgĩ’s theory is clearly put to work by the colonizers in his own novel, Weep Not, Child. Njoroge’s schooling acquaints...
David Pryce Jones calls Naipaul a novelist with an over-hanging sense of loss. According to Jones, diminishing is a favorite word of his, narrow is another[1]. Naipaul’s concerns are fantasy and myth, homelessness and quest. He frequently uses worlds like dereliction, violation, loss, illusion, fraud, corruption, degradation and idle. Despite these overwhelming concerns and repetitions, each of Naipaul’s novels has a different texture and shape. The loosely connected stories of Miguel Street, the mock-history of Ganesh in the Mystic Masseur, the satiric political drama in The Suffrage Of Elvira, the brooding and expansive A House For Mr. Bishwas, the bitter sweet memoir of Ralph Singh in The Mimic Men, and the violent world of Guerillas and A Bend in the River are manifestations of different dimensions of the modern dilemmas that confront the global village that the world is coming to be. Overall a critical consensus has emerged that Nai...