81 research outputs found
Interview with Amitav Banerji: Commonwealth Oral History Project
No full textInterview with Amitav Banerji, conducted 21st September 2015. s part of the Commonwealth Oral History Project. The project aims to produce a unique digital research resource on the oral history of the Commonwealth since 1965 through sixty oral history interviews with leading figures in the recent history of the organisation. It will provide an essential research tool for anyone investigating the history of the Commonwealth and will serve to promote interest in and understanding of the organisation. Banerji, Amitav. 1953-. Born in India. Educated at Georgetown University (BA) and Delhi School of Economics (MA). Joined Indian Foreign Service in 1975. Private Secretary to the Indian Foreign Minister, 1979-1982. Joined Commonwealth Secretariat in 1990. Special Adviser in Commonwealth Political Affairs Division from 1990 to 2000. Chief of Staff to the Secretary-General, 2000-09. Director of Political Affairs, 2009-2015. Projects Director, Global Leadership Foundation, 2015-
Préface
No full textBanerji Amitav. Préface. In: Cahiers Charles V, n°49,2010. Le Commonwealth des nations en mutation: décolonisations, globalisation et gouvernance. pp. 5-12
Amitav Ghosh: Climate Change Here and Now
No full textIn this contribution I would like to give back something of the atmosphere of the debate that gave birth to Amitav Ghosh’s essay The Great Derangement. Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016). By referring to the lectures that preceded its publication and to the introductory presentations of the author on behalf of major scholars of the University of Chicago, and to the questions by the audience, it is possible to reconstruct a whole debate that acquires different meanings in the Anglophone countries and in Europe. Questioning some of the assumptions implied in Amitav Ghosh’s discourse it is possible to better place his text and the relevance of climate change within our literary and philosophical discourse, and to re-think our cultural policies, and didactic engagement, here and now
Ep. #040 - Amitav Ghosh
No full textThis recording and transcript form part of a collection of podcasts conducted by the Cultures of Energy at Rice University. Cultures of Energy brings writers, artists and scholars together to talk, think and feel their way into the Anthropocene. We cover serious issues like climate change, species extinction and energy transition. But we also try to confront seemingly huge and insurmountable problems with insight, creativity and laughter.Cymene and Dominic define (finally!) professionalism and offer a brief review of Leonardo DiCaprio’s soon to be released climate change documentary, Before the Flood. Then (11:43) we are very pleased to welcome to the podcast acclaimed novelist, Amitav Ghosh, author of The Shadow Lines (1988), The Hungry Tide (2004) and The Ibis trilogy (2008-2015), among many other works. We talk about his latest work of non-fiction, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and why he thinks it has proven so difficult to bring climate change into literature. We discuss the worldview of the novel and how its emphasis on creating believable narratives has excluded precisely the kinds of unlikely anthropocenic encounters that are becoming increasingly frequent across the world. Amitav argues that before an alternate world can become a reality, it needs to become an imaginative reality and this is why the arts are so crucial to coming to terms with the Anthropocene. We also discuss “serious” art’s fear of being deemed merely “illustrative” and how this may be linked to a Cold War aversion to the aesthetics of socialist realism. Now, Amitav warns, the world has risen up as a protagonist even as our means of representation aren’t up to engaging it. He predicts that the mansions of serious fiction will suffer a similar fate to the mansions of Miami beach as our waters rise. We talk about what is really being denied in climate change denial and how the privileges and comforts of a carbon-fueled lifestyle is something which neither the West nor Asia is prepared to give up. We close with Amitav’s own next novel project and how climate change inspires him personally and artistically
Writing from the shadowlands: how cross-cultural literature negotiates the legacy of Edward Said
No full textThis thesis examines the impact of Edward Said's influential work Orientalism and its legacy in respect of contemporary reading and writing across cultures. It also questions the legitimacy of Said's retrospective stereotyping of early examples of cross-cultural representation in literature as uncompromisingly 'orientalist'.
It is well known that the release of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978 was responsible for the rise of a range of cultural and critical theories from multiculturalism to postcolonialism. It was a study that not only polarized critics and forced scholars to re-examine orientalist archives, but persuaded creative writers to re-think their ethnographic positions when it came to the literary representations of cultures other than their own. Without detracting from the enormous impact of Said, this thesis isolates gaps and silences in Said that need correcting. Furthermore, there is an element of intransigence, an uncompromising refusal to fine-tune what is essentially a binary discourse of the West and its other in Said's work, that encourages the continued interrogation of power relations but which, because of its very boldness, paradoxically disallows the extent to which the conflict of cultures indeed produced new, hybrid social and cultural formations.
In an attempt to challenge the severity of Said's claim that 'every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric', the thesis examines a number of different discursive contexts in which such a presumption is challenged. Thus while the second chapter discusses the 'traditional' profession-based orientalism of nineteenth-century E. G. Browne, the third considers the anti-imperialism of colonial administrator Leonard Woolf. The fourth chapter provides a reflection on the difficulties of diasporic 'orientalism' through the works of Michael Ondaatje while chapter five demonstrates the effects of the dialogism used by Amitav Ghosh as a defence against 'orientalism'. The thesis concludes with an examination of contemporary writing by Andrea Levy that appositely illustrates the legacy of Said's influence.
While the restrictive parameters of Said's work make it difficult to mount a thorough-going critique of Said, this thesis shows that, indeed, it is within the restraints of these parameters and in the very discourse that Said employs that he traps himself. This study claims that even Said is susceptible to 'orientalist' criticism in that he is as much an 'orientalist' as those at whom he directs his polemic
Ghosh, the shadow lines, and the Indian-English novel
No full textThe prizewinning author of novels, nonfiction, and hybrid texts, Amitav Ghosh grew up in India and trained as an anthropologist. His works have been translated in over thirty languages. They cross and mix a number of genres, from science fiction to the historical novel, incorporating ethnohistory and travelogue and even recuperating dead languages. His subjects include climate change, postcolonial identities, translocation, migration, oceanic spaces, and the human interface with the environment
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