Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature
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Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines: Re-Reading its Craft and Concerns
Get PDFIn this essay I examine Amitav Ghosh’s craft and concerns in one of his finest novels, The Shadow Lines (1988). I further explore Ghosh’s organisation of the diegetic elements, such as the novel’s world and situation, events and characters, as well as the mode of telling and recounting the story, and argue how it is designed in conjunction with his central thematic preoccupation. As memory provides the narrative trigger in this novel, I analyse Ghosh’s mnemonic enterprise as part of his narrative management. By using different narrative terms derived from Russian Formalism and Structuralist mediations, the novel’s construction is taken apart to demonstrate Ghosh’s innovative art. Besides dealing with the novel’s narratological technique, this essay looks at Ghosh’s interrogation of cartographic determinations against the background of Bengal’s vivisection into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Bengal and evaluates his espousal of secular tolerance and alternative cartography in a multi-cultural scenario
Dismantling Gendered Nationalism in Kee Thuan Chye’s We Could **** You, Mr. Birch
Get PDFThis article analyses the representation of gender in Kee Thuan Chye’s play We Could **** You, Mr. Birch (1994), examining how the characters are used to undermine patriarchal concepts of nation. Kee uses historical characters and events, situating them within a modern-day frame which takes a critical stance towards the common portrayal of both imperialism and nationalism as male-centred domains. The events of this play highlight the masculinising discourse of imperialism and, subsequently, nationalism; this discourse is then viewed through a modern lens which interrupts it through the presence of “unruly woman whose refusal to comply with gender expectations unsettles various power relations on which the stability of the… society depends (Gilbert 153), as well as men who cannot live up to the expectations of the nationalist constructions of male power. He thus critiques the “maleness†of the nation while proffering alternative possibi lities for nation- construction through the recovery of (fictional) female histories.Â
The Road People: Poetry and Urban (Im)Mobility in Singapore
Get PDFThe extent to which dromological desires, the desires of the roads, have become intertwined with the Singaporean condition may not be underestimated. Life in the island city develops through a unique range of circumstances from limited land resources, economic aspirations,and political harmonisation to the constant evanescing of its ground for national identity. The mix of modernisation, claustrophobia, result-oriented policy-making, and endless cultural renewal creates an explosive context for the resident to embrace speed. This essay aims to study the impact of Singapore’s excessive but necessary reliance on its roads and will explore both the observations of its poets and how they compare with regular political answers. Some of the most representative poems from the last four decades will be examined in order to outline the human experience of urban speed as a catastrophe
Postponing Truth; Plea of the Asian Woman; You and I Looking at Independence; I am Kuala Lumpur; Name
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Re-visiting the Homeland: Philosophical and Aesthetic Dimensions in Adib Khan’s Spiral Road
Get PDFThis paper focuses on the fiction of the multi-award winning Bangladeshi- Australian novelist Adib Khan. From the plurality of cultures in which Khan’s fiction is embedded, the paper draws out its subcontinental philosophical and aesthetic dimensions. The paper hypothesises that in Khan’s fiction, the diasporic’s return to the “imaginary homeland†is triggered by the desire for self-knowledge and self-fulfilment. It extends to an analysis of the aesthetics of this return journey.The paper will be framed by the classical Indian theories of Rasa (Aesthetics)
