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The
racial composition of America right from the time fugitives
from England sailed to New England in `Mayflower' and intrepid
adventurers of European countries moved over, has been described
as a `melting pot!' With the subsequent influx of immigrants
from Africa and later from the Asian continent, the structure
turned out to be occasionally a `crazy quilt'. However, a
curious paradox is that America has been considered a land
of limitless possibility and also of shrinking opportunity
for the full blossoming of individual talent, owing to what
has been called `cultural massification'. The emotional trauma
experienced intensely by the native Americans, when they were
pushed out of their cultural moorings, and also by the later
immigrants from all over the world, calls for incisive analyses
of the impact on their psyche. Besides the psychic trauma
of adjusting to an alien environment, there has been the perennial
phenomenon of patriarchal violence through the sanction of
tradition, in established societies, which is sensitively
articulated in literatures in the regional languages. Even
a male-centered novelist like Dickens looks at the plight
of women in his contemporary society. The emotionally disturbed
individual of the twentieth century, feeling alienated from
the world around, finds himself in `the dungeon of soul' and
goes on a `quest for self', which hopefully results in self-fulfillment.
A critical look at these and related issues provides a useful
base for further enquiry.
Gustavo
Sánchez Canales, in his paper, "`Necessity Freed
Spinoza and Imprisoned Yakov': The Presence of Spinoza's Ethics
in Bernard Malamud's The Fixer," examines the
issue of imprisonment in Bernard Malamud's novel, The Fixer,
as indicative of acceptance of the limitations of human
beings as well as of their subjection to superior forces.
His study helps the reader gain a better understanding of
the position of a human being in the world at large. For a
deeper perception of this position, the author convincingly
employs Spinoza's concepts of God, Freedom and Historical
Necessity, and Malamud's State, which help in unraveling the
recesses of the complex personality of Yakov, and thus throw
light on the complex human psyche.
Despite
the claims of the invading outsiders that the discovery of
America was demonstrative of "manifest destiny,"
the native Americans ever considered it an invasion, which
is still continuing. In the context of such cultural aggression,
Brajesh Sawhney, in his paper, "That the People Might
Live: Strategies of Survival in Contemporary Native American
Fiction" details the response of writers like N Scott
Momaday, James Welch, Louise Erdrich, Wendy Rose, Marmon Silko,
Gerald Vizenor, Sherman Alexie and Joy Harjo to the process
of colonization, which debilitated their cultures, traditions
and identities. Such cultural imperialism in the post-colonial
era does have a familiar ring to the Indian readers, who are
yet to be emancipated from the cultural hegemony of the colonizer.
In
the contemporary world of globalization, there is increasing
mobility, resulting in continuous migration, which in its
wake creates an intensely disturbing impact on the psyche
of immigrants. A Rama Krishna Rao and R V Jayanth Kasyap,
in their paper, "A Critique of Immigrant Psyche: A Study
of the Selected Works of Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri,"
focus on the cultural conflict and the psychological upheaval
that the diasporic characters go through in their attempts
to adopt to the new cultural and social mores, as presented
in novels like Mukherjee's Days and Nights in Calcutta
and Wife, and Lahiri's The Namesake and
in some of the short stories included in Interpreter of
Maladies. While in some cases like that of Dimple, the
impact is disastrous, there are persons like Jasmine who successfully
adjust and `strike back' at the melting pot. A few of the
protagonists of Lahiri's stories exhibit an inner resolve
and firmness to overcome the psychological and emotional trauma.
Rekha
and Anup Beniwal try to showcase how two women writers from
two distinct parts of India evoke in their novels the persisting
patriarchal violence in the social fabric of India, in their
paper, "Confronting Patriarchal Violence: A Comparative
Reading of Mahasweta Devi's `Draupadi' and Ambai's `Black
Horse Square'". The authors show that there is a conflict
between representation and self-presentation of women. The
stories of the women here destabilize the representational
praxis to argue for agential empowerment. The exploitation
of the tribal woman Dopdi Mejhen of Mahasweta Devi and of
Ambai's Rosa are symptomatic of the continuing violence against
women in the patriarchal society. Both the novels raise poignant
questions, but the answers are elusive as yet.
Vikrant
Sehgal, in his paper, "The `Other': A Still Question
of Postcoloniality," takes up the question of defining
what exactly constitutes coloniality. Just as the concept
of "minority" in the American context extends beyond
Afro-American literature into other national writings like
the Native American, Asian, and so on, postcolonial texts
now include a larger range and sweep. The author draws liberally
on the works of theorists like Henry Louis Gates, Abdul JanMohamed,
Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak, and in its attempt to analyze
the grounds of postcolonial discourse, the paper also looks
at the `Fanonian' critique and the implications of cultural
politics.
Ramesh
K Misra traces the motif of individual's quest for wholeness,
the central concern of man in the twentieth century, in his
paper, "Quest for Self: A Study of Angus Wilson's As
If By Magic. Making use of the Campbellian paradigm of
Separation, Initiation and Return, the author studies the
mythological adventures of Alexandra Grant and Hamo Langmuir,
which finally show that life is not only a search for meaning
but also a search for love and communication with others.
The
paper, "Looking Through the Kaleidoscope: The Dickensian
Heroine," by Seema Murugan, is an attempt to study the
rare feminine species in the creative world of Charles Dickens.
Though there are a few feminine characters created by Dickens,
their voices are generally muted in the harsh world of raucous
injustice. The women characters are generally overshadowed
by the male counterparts, and yet there are women like Mrs
Bardwell in The Pickwick Papers and Amy Dorrit in Little
Dorrit who remain in our memory long after we put the
novels down. The author's kaleidoscope does provide a fresh
insight into the minds of Dickens' women.
-
S S Prabhakar Rao
Consulting
Editor
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