1,451 research outputs found
Diasporic narratives and migrant memories in 'The Teak Almirah' by Indian Jewish author Jael Silliman
No full textDiasporic literature posits itself as a space of vision in which to prompt ruptures, go beyond prescriptive and proscriptive limits, and imagine new ways to identify and belong (Parmar 2016). This is what makes the novels by Jael Silliman worth reading and apprehending in the contested and complex scenario of contemporary Indian literatures in English, further allowing an analysis of the role of English in constructing historically complex communities of readers in a transnational and transcultural perspective. At the crossroads of literature, anthropology and history, Silliman’s novel The Teak Almirah (2016) evokes times and places of colonial India, re-casting them in a new performance where both the characters and the readers are compelled to follow the shadows, the rumours, the hints and the traces that are defined an emotional geography and a “cartography of diaspora” (Brah 1996)
The Novel and the Northeast: indigenous narratives in Indian literatures
No full textIn the aftermath of Partition, north-east India emerged as a landlocked and increasingly disenfranchised area where the springing-up of ethno-nationalist movements and guerrillas has elicited a process of growing militarization by the Indian state. Although keenly aware that it is actually problematic to club a very heterogeneous corpus of literary writings together under the label ‘north-east’, this article critically employs this label as a functional working definition to discuss and compare different authors from ‘the region’ and analyse the way their novels are contributing to delineate a tentative mapping of the complex reality of indigenous India
Multilingualism and indigenous cinema in Northeast India: the case of Kokborok language films
No full textThis chapter highlights the crucial issue of India's tribal languages in relation to the production of indigenous films, the politics of visuality, and the creation of a counter-hegemonic historical archive of “screen memories” in which the ubiquitous question of cultural identity and shifting positionalities takes central stage
The Khāsi New Wave: addressing indigenous issues from a literary and cinematic perspective
No full textThis article looks at 19/87, both in its literary and cinematic modes of storytelling, as important authorial works that aim at deconstructing the artificial idea of a pure khasiness, where those who allegedly ‘do-not-belong’ are constantly placed in an ambiguous and, sometimes, dangerous situation. Both the film by Diengdoh and Lyngdoh and the short story by Pariat represent important authorial works that combine artistic experimentation with social commitment, contributing to the development of innovative literatures and cinemas in India
Nepal. A theatre for better reasons.
No full text[Dalla prefazione] This work begins with a visionary poem and ends with a poetic vision of Nepal on its path towards Utopia. Sustaining and nurturing hope, Nepali people have defiantly refused to plunge intodespair, notwithstanding the enormous challenges ahead. In thetrue spirit of Bloch’s principle of hope, they have rehearsed ‘for the example’ on Nepal’s historical stage, performing on it ‘a theatre for better reasons’
Calcutta Kosher and The man with many hats. Recasting the Baghdadi Jews as a ‘new’ minority in contemporary India
No full textQuesto saggio analizza alcune opere letterarie di scrittrici contemporanee appartenenti alla comunità degli Ebrei Baghdadi di Calcutta, la più piccola delle comunità di religione ebraica dell’India, giunta nel Subcontinente alla fine del diciottesimo secolo. Attraverso il romanzo di Jael Silliman, A Man with Many Hats (2013) e l’opera teatrale di Shelley Silas Calcutta Kosher (2004), l’articolo naviga gli spazi interstiziali della memoria e ripercorre le tracce di una «geografia sensoriale» che riporta il lettore tra i vicoli angusti ma pieni di vita di una delle città più importanti e affascinanti dell’India co- loniale: Calcutta. Ribattezzata nel 2001 con il nome di Kolkata, la città che emerge dalle narrazioni letterarie e drammaturgiche di Silliman e Silas resta tuttavia la vecchia Calcutta intrisa dei sapori e dei profumi delle memorie dei suoi abitanti, in particolare quelle degli Ebrei Baghdadi che, nel corso di due secoli, l’hanno eletta come casa, rivendicando un’appartenenza transnazion- ale e ridefinendosi, in linea con questa nuova posizionalit , ‘Ebrei di Cal- cutta’. Nel nome di questa nuova identità, anche gli Ebrei di Calcutta si sono uniti al gruppo eterogeneo e più vasto di Ebrei Indiani per chiedere il ricon- oscimento dello status di minoranza all’interno dell’India postcoloniale. Attra- verso la narrativa e le opere di teatro, queste autrici di origine ebrea Baghdadi presentano dei quadri della memoria tessuti con trame e orditi sensoriali, che evocano la storia di questa importante comunità transnazionale minore.This article discusses some of the recent narratives of India’s Bagh- dadi Jews, looking at the way works of literature have been recasting this community as an Indian minority referred to as ‘Indian Jewish’ or, more specifically, ‘Calcutta Jewish’. Indulging into nostalgic memory building, adopting literature as a strategical practice of history-writing and engag- ing into an archaeology of cultural performances, two women authors of Baghdadi Jewish descent have retrieved past lives and memories along the «sensory geographies» of India’s most vibrant colonial city: Calcutta. Since 2001 renamed Kolkata, the city has undergone deep changes in postcolonial times and yet remains the perfect canvas where to perform a new hybrid subjectivity, that of the Indian Jew – or ‘Calcutta Jew’ as some would prefer – testifying to the historical ties and special bond to the city that once upon a time they used to call home. Whilst the remaining Jewish communities of India are undergoing a legal battle for the recognition of their civic and political rights and the granting of the status of ‘minority’ – so far bestowed upon them only by the State of Maharashtra (2016) – some writers are con- tributing to highlight the great history of a forgotten community, the Bagh- dadi Jews, who had arrived in India at the end of the eighteenth century as a «diaspora of hope» and are now claiming an Indian Jewish minoritarian identity, so far denied. From the autobiographical novel by Jael Silliman The Man With Many Hats (2013) to the witty theatre play Calcutta Kosher by Shelley Silas (2004), this article retraces some of the stories of the small- est Indian Jewish community, the Baghdadi Jews of Calcutta. Navigating the lanes of Calcutta/Kolkata, sensory memoryscapes evocatively reframe the history of this minor transnational community
Scena Tibet
No full textScena Tibet è un viaggio tra le scene e il ‘dietro le quinte’ del Tibet a teatro. È uno studio che indaga come lo sguardo occidentale (e orientale, ma esogeno) su questo paese e sui suoi abitanti abbia influenzato non solo le rappresentazioni cinematografiche e letterarie, ma anche la messa in scena teatrale, spesso filtrata attraverso una lente mistica e mistificante. Il Tibet continua a essere percepito come un orizzonte perduto, sognato e immaginato: a teatro, il dramma scenico diventa specchio del dramma storico, alimentato da quell’immaginario orientalistico che per secoli ha condizionato la relazione con questa antica cultura
Beyond the mystic line: a diasporic Tibetan cinema of nostalgia
No full textAbstract · While religion and spirituality often come into the frame of Tibetan diasporic cinema, in some recent lms directed and produced by a younger generation of Tibetans in exile, Buddhism appears as just another component of Tibetan lives. Part of the importance of these lms, shot in the interstitial and liminal spaces of refugees’ ‘homes away from home[land]’, resides in their capa- city of resisting a mystical, idealised vision of Tibet and Tibetans. Based on on-going research among Tibetan lmmakers outside Tibet and their shifting positionalities as diasporic subjects, this paper looks at the renegotiation of the issues of material poverty and emotional precarity presented through four experimental lms made by Tibetans diasporic lm directors, who strive to re-present Tibetan refugees beyond a homogenizing ethnic frame and a stereotyping mystic line
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