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Gendered Desires and Interracial Sympathy in Philip Meadows
Taylor's Seeta
-- Priya J Shah
In the project of empire, forms of companionship were crucial to the creation of unequal
power relations that strengthened empire while simultaneously serving as (spurious) proof of
British civility. While white female desire is cast as transgressive in nineteenth-century colonial
literature, Philip Meadows Taylor's "Mutiny" novel, Seeta (1872), observes the potential of harnessing
colonial desires within the context of an interracial marriage between an Englishman and an Indian
woman for the benefit of an imperial project that is seeking a new identity in the wake of the
Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 and the expulsion of the East India Company as a governing body. In Seeta, an Indian woman's longing to transcend the Hindu widow's segregated sphere in order to satiate
her desire for an Englishman and by consuming his English cultural values provides an avenue
for cultivating the cultural citizenship of Indian natives in the British colonial regime and a model
for interracial cooperation in British India after the brutality of the Rebellion. Meadows Taylor
shifts the discourse of colonial desire by arguing for the redemptive quality of (sexual and
intellectual) desires in establishing a new prototype of colonial rule based on an ideology of sympathy.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Framing Cultural Identity
and Space Through Translation:
The Case of Shulamis Yelin's Fiction
-- María Laura Spoturno and Amanda B Zamuner
The overall aim of this paper is to approach the question of linguistic and cultural translation
and its influence on the configuration of distinctive cultural spaces in Yelin's collection Shulamis: Stories from a Montreal Childhood. The main character of this collection struggles between
worldswhich are, to a certain extent, symbolised by the use and allusion to English, Yiddish and
Frenchin search of her own linguistic and cultural identity. Thus, the confrontation of different
spaces and the need to translate one's experience becomes a significant element in Yelin's writing.
The stories in this collection present Canada's spirit of respect and equitable treatment for all
cultures and identities while showing the difficulties immigrants had to face as well as the dangers
of acculturation. In this paper, we examine the construction of different cultural spaces from
a theoretical perspective which considers the importance of some cultural and linguistic
processes associated with code-switching (Poplack, 1984; and Myers-Scotton, 1993 and 2006), giving
due attention to the phenomena of linguistic and cultural translation (Bhabha, [1994] 2006;
Tymoczko, 2000; and Trivedi, 2005). Also, we look at the position of Shulamis Yelin as a writer who
wishes to translate worlds for her readers.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Knowledge Work and the Databasing of Human Rights: Witness and Digital Economy of Suffering
-- Pramod K Nayar
This essay argues that knowledge culture today is integral to the global archivization of
human rights violations. Taking as its subject of analysis the website Witness, it argues that new forms of narratives emerge on a daily basis from across the world, constituting a new knowledge form
about the world, that websites like Witness constitute a non-official and user-generated archive of
testimony that demands an ethical engagement. The database, it argues, is a central `genre' of human
rights discourse in the new knowledge economy. A `narrative' emerges from the database through
a collection of trajectories used/followed by the reader. I suggest that this matter of user-choice is
a call for an ethical engagement with the database of the suffering Others. It creates a new
geographyof sufferingfor us to explore. Witness is the space where the suffering Other appears, and
calls upon us to respond ethically.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Deconstructing Masculinity Myths in Zimbabwean African
Nationalism: A C Hodza's Shona Folk Tales in Ngano Dzechinyakare (1980)
-- Katy Khan
This paper analyses A C Hodza's Ngano Dzechinyakare (Old Folk
Tales) published in 1980. The paper argues that Hodza `borrowed' the folk tales from his Shona culture. However, it will also
be suggested that despite not being the `originator' of the stories, the power of Hodza's
collection resides in the author's understanding that to retell a told story is to contaminate it; "each
re-telling produces different versions of the same stories that are `bound' by different contexts and
meanings" (Vambe, 2006, 260). Therefore, to the extent that Hodza was able to recreate the folk tales,
he too, can claim to be the `originator' of the narratives. It will, therefore, be demonstrated
that Hodza uses language embodied in folk tale as a site of contestation both of what is
standardized Shona, as well as the idea of a homogenous Zimbabwean nation.
In doing so, Hodza's folk tales question Zimbabwe's cultural nationalism, particularly its
tendency to project African nationalisms through the Zezuru dialect as the lingua franca of the
Zimbabwean people.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
The Fe-male Within:
Ventriloquists, Tricksters,
and Cyborgs as Inappropriate/d Femininities of and in Black Female American Gangsta Rap
-- Elisabeth Engel
This essay analyses black female American gangsta rap as a radically historically specific
phenomenon arising in the urban milieu of the early nineties in the US. It takes into account lyrics,
performances and visuals (music videos) of female gangstas, not as singular component parts, but as patterns
of interference that are cross-linked and thus shape up as provisional, never finished female
gangsta body. The femininity of this amorphous body will be described as made by inappropriate/d
others appearing within gangsta rap, namely ventriloquists, tricksters and cyborgs. Subjects of
analysis are Bo$$ and her album Born
Gangstaz (1992), Mia X and her album Unlady
Like (1997), Lady of Rage and her album Necessary
Roughness (1997), and Lil' Kim and her album Notorious K.I.M. (2000). Since the notion of inappropriate/d femininities allows for acknowledging the
mutual pervasion of (gendered/stereotyped) borderlines, it offers a reading of gangsta femininities'
critical potential that contests both current interpretations of female emancipation as oppositional
stance towards men, and of gangsta rap as a male dominated domain.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions
of the Dutch Plantation Company:
A Polyphonic Narrative and Its Discourse on Colonialism
-- Vasugi Kailasam
Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Plantation
Company (1860) is a novel written by a Dutch colonial official, Edward Douwes Dekker. Published under the pen name of Multatuli,
the protagonist who in many ways resembles Dekker severely criticizes the Dutch colonial policy
in the East Indies. This book led to the formulation of a new Ethical policy in the East Indies.
Almost an unknown literary work in the field of postcolonialism, this book has been subjected
to contradictory reviews. While critics like Pramoedya Ananta Toer hailed it as `a book that
killed colonialism', other critics like D H Lawrence denounced it as a `most irritating work'.
This discrepancy is mainly due to the narrative structure of the novel. The narrative is curiously
shaped with four narrators who give their opinion on Dutch colonialism. The reader is then left to
baffle with which version he/she should believe and identify with. In this paper, I would like to
examine if there exists a specific link/relationship between colonialism and narration in the novel.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Four Poems by Maggie Harris
Altar, Kwakwani River
Words Across the Water
Of Morte d'Arthur and The Wide Sargasso Sea
ABC with Michael Jackson
-- Maggie Harris
© 2010 Maggie Harris. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Four Word Sonnets by Seymour Mayne
Magic Carpet
The Study
Winter Squall
Thaw
-- Seymour Mayne
© 2010 Seymour Mayne. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Winter in a City
-- Jayanta Mahapatra
A Growing Ground
-- Jayanta Mahapatra
© 2010 Jayanta Mahapatra. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Celebration
-- Cyril Dabydeen
Nirvana Again
-- Cyril Dabydeen
© 2010 Cyril Dabydeen. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Orenoque
-- Robert Bensen
© 2010 Robert Bensen. All Rights Reserved.
SHORT STORIES IN TRANSLATION
Pano Nepapo Nevanhu Vekwa Svosve (Sketches of Svosve's People)
-- Memory Chirere
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Akkada Poosina Puvvu (The Flower That Blossomed There!)
-- Chandra Latha
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Lianchhiari leh Chawngfianga (Lianchhiari and Chawngfianga)
-- Margaret L Pachuau
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Anandapu Avadhulu (The Limits of Happiness)
-- D Kesava Rao
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Nanna, Nadi (Daddy, River)
-- Satyam Sankaramanchi
© 2010 Copyright of the English version rests with the Translator. All Rights Reserved.
Baakee Santhathi (Progeny of Debt)
-- Satyam Sankaramanchi
© 2010 Copyright of the English version rests with the Translator. All Rights Reserved.
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