Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature
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Development and Welfare Discourses, Marginality and Cultural Interventions in Mahasweta Devi’s Aajir
Full text linkThis essay is an attempt to study the position of the marginalised communities in India caught in the web of the politics of development and welfare programmes, through a reading of the cultural and political ramifications of Mahasweta Devi’s Aajir (Devi’s dramatisation of her short fiction of this title in Bengali). The objective is to show how the text is a kind of cultural intervention with political implications in favour of the marginalised – low class caste people, untouchables, bonded labourers, tribals and women. It is to demonstrate not only how the context gets embedded in the text but also how the text participates in the context in reflecting on and influencing the context, revealing the text-context reciprocity
Beyond the Rhetoric of Belonging: Arundhati Roy and the Dalit Perspective
Full text linkThis essay proposes a reflection on Arundhati Roy’s recent involvement in Dalit politics. In particular, it addresses the polemic letter to Roy presented by a group of Dalit intellectuals after the publication of a new edition of Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste (originally written in 1936), which includes an introductory essay by Roy. The critiques against Roy interrogate the right to take part in public life without being able to claim “entitlement†or “authenticity.†By discussing the debates over rights to speak and to “represent,†this essay offers a reflection on the meaning of a politics of emancipation that falls neither into identity politics nor into appropriating the voice of the marginalised. Instead, this essay proposes a reappraisal of the value of an “ethics of identification†through which outsiders can assume the standpoint of the oppressed and be able to tell experiences that they have not lived through. Beyond the rhetoric of belonging, the exchange between Roy and her Dalit critics suggests an ethics of identification that emphasises the continuing relevance of expressing social consciousness and communication across sites of struggle for social justice
Serving Up Chineseness: Myths of Authenticity and Identity in Kylie Kwong’s Cookery Texts
Full text linkThis paper seeks to examine the form and content of the culinary television programmes and cookbooks of Australian-Chinese celebrity chef and restaurateur, Kylie Kwong. It will utilise Bill Nichols’ theory of “The Challenge of Persuasion†to demonstrate how Kwong’s cookery show, Kylie Kwong: Cooking with Heart and Soul, is not just about food and cooking, but embodies particular ideologies and “myths,†as theorised by Barthes, about Chinese culture and identity. It also draws upon selected excerpts from Kwong’s cookbooks and food memoir, Kylie Kwong: Recipes and Stories (2003) and My China: A Feast for the Senses (2007), to unpack their representations of Chinese culture and identity. My aim is to elucidate how Kwong’s cooking show and cookbooks transcend their pragmatic function to become representational tools that carry specific meanings about Chineseness, both in terms of its production and consumption
“had to laugh todayâ€: Arthur Yap, Singapore and “Blind Faithâ€
No full textIn this paper I identify a key source for Arthur Yap’s early and rarely discussed poem “newsâ€: Steve Winwood’s lyrics to Blind Faith’s rock song “Had to Cry Today†(1969). Yap’s curious and sustained appropriation and reworking of this experimental English “hippy†text is set in the contexts of, first, the poet’s other literary responses to popular music of the 1960s and, second, the Singapore state’s increasingly hostile response to the hippy movement during this period. Informed by discussion of Winwood’s cryptic lyrics, and an exploration of the Singapore state’s expedient introduction and regulation of televised news broadcasts during the 1960s, I present a reading of Yap’s “news,†highlighting the poet’s adroit reworking of “Had to Cry Today†in the context of mass communication in a culturally conservative Asian city state. Yap, I argue, exploits tensions in Winwood’s lyric between both reality and representation, authoritarian diktat and personal-plebeian response. Parodying the Singapore state’s pragmatism, Yap reduces the polysemous possibilities of “Had to Cry Today†to mundane, unambiguous statement. I conclude by suggesting that Yap’s deployment of satire via subtle parody of a hippy source till now unidentified by the majority of Yap’s readership, materially extends Rajeev Patke and Philip Holden’s recent characterisation of Yap as a poet with an “obsessive interest in… mimicry… and subversion.†I conclude by suggesting that Yap in his early engagements with hippy culture reveals a conspicuously less ambiguous stance toward the emerging postcolonial city state than has been previously suggested
David Chuenyan Lai and Guo Ding, Great Fortune Dream: The Struggles and Triumphs of Chinese Settlers in Canada, 1858-1966
Full text linkGene-Protective Narratives: The Arabian Nights Reconsidered
Full text linkWhile acknowledging the importance of Mark Turner’s claim that Shahrazad, the character from The Arabian Nights, epitomises the “literary mind,†this paper points to possible shortcomings in his argument. Through careful consideration of Shahrazad’s function in the narratives within narratives that make up The Arabian Nights, the paper plays down the literary dimensions of her storytelling ability, drawing attention instead to the ways in which she invariably uses language as an instrument designed to achieve a specific end. By incorporating ideas from thinkers outside of the humanities -- especially Daniel C. Dennett and Richard Dawkins – the paper offers a new reading of The Arabian Nights, which incorporates the contention that Shahrazad is both a user of language and is used by language – a spinner of webs of narrative who is also caught up in these webs. Distinguishing carefully between genes and the bodies that contain them, the paper proposes that a fundamental aspect of Shahrazad’s identity is that she is a vehicle for the spreading of genes. Finally, generalising from the stories contained in The Arabian Nights, the paper concludes that other literary narratives may also turn out to be more fundamentally gene-protective than they are “literary.â