Papers by Atri Majumder
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2022
In A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam invades the consciousness of the protagonist to reveal the ... more In A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam invades the consciousness of the protagonist to reveal the subliminal enmeshed spaces of the personal and the political. The distance between the traumatic events of the Sri Lankan civil war and the alienated individual who has apparently remained aloof, is obliterated through the refracted memories that have embedded the subject in the matrix of his country's political history. The individual memory thus coalesces into the fabric of collective memory as the narrative unfolds. The concatenation of the traumatic realities and the sequestered psyche, untethers the individual from its ensconced private sphere and situates it within the macrocosmic and pervasive sociopolitical structure. The transmutation of subjectivity is attuned to the affective sites of collective trauma. The dichotomy of proximity and distance elucidated by the apprehensive reflections of the survivor is symptomatic of the subterranean intensities that elude corporeal presence and agency. The memories of the individual become resonant with the affective (un)lived experiences of traumatic violence, that deconstruct the tension of presence/absence, and consequently reconfigure the preconceived notions of subjectivity. The theoretical framework of this paper would foreground Michael Rothberg's conceptualization of the implicated subject, to limn the trajectory of identities who are indirectly implicated in traumatic legacies. This paper argues that the trauma of the genocidal war and its aftermath is transcribed into affective memories, that bear the potential to reconstitute identity by recognizing and transcending the state of implication.
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The IUP Journal of English Studies, 2020
This paper attempts to explore the cultural heterogeneity of language and how language transforms... more This paper attempts to explore the cultural heterogeneity of language and how language transforms in tandem with culture. Amitav Ghosh and Salman Rushdie’s works have been noted for the dexterous use of language and the representation of multicultural spaces. Rushdie has succeeded in creating a distinctive style within the tradition of Indian writing in English—his characteristic “chutnification” of English. Ghosh has also created a unique style by extensively blending different Indian languages with English persistently in his works. Both Ghosh and Rushdie explore the juxtaposition of cultural spaces through the linguistic variants used in the historical novels Sea of Poppies and The Enchantress of Florence. The hybrid identities are amplified by the multilingual and multicultural cast of characters populating the novels. Rushdie effectively recreates the cosmopolitan Renaissance atmosphere prevalent in the Mughal era by interweaving the particular cultural identities with the idiosyncratic uses of language. Ghosh’s novel is also embedded in a historical context, and the story is unfolded from multivocal perspectives, while simultaneously establishing diasporic identities. Rushdie and Ghosh have thus both explored multiculturalism, hybridity, pluralism, cosmopolitanism, and migrancy in their fiction, and this paper focalizes on these themes from the perspective of language.
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Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities , 2020
The emergence of 'post-truth' has dramatically affected the contemporary socio-political discours... more The emergence of 'post-truth' has dramatically affected the contemporary socio-political discourses. The blurring of the distinctions between fact and fiction has become ostensible owing to the proliferation of social media and the pivotal role played by cyberspaces in creating volatile identities. The erosion of objectivity and the creation of a Baudrillardian 'hyperreality' have destabilized the position of truth irrevocably. The meteoric rise of far-right populist governments across the world with their jingoistic, xenophobic and parochial brand of politics, the erasure of subjective autonomy and invasion of privacy have pushed the world to the brink of moral anarchy, devoid of ethical values and veracity. Salman Rushdie's latest work Quichotte (2019) is a postmodern rendering of Miguel De Cervantes' picaresque novel Don Quixote. This paper attempts to critically analyse the novel vis-à-vis the 'post-truth condition'. The evolution of the concept of truth is traced through the ideas of various philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard and other philosophers in order to ascertain the origin and theoretical implications of 'post-truth'. Rushdie has foregrounded the contemporary socio-political issues like the impending catastrophic consequences of climate change, the prevalent opioid crisis and the precarious position of immigrants who are often victims of racist violence. He has characteristically employed magic realism and narrative pyrotechnics in the novel. The various intertextual references, allusions to popular culture, and autobiographical traces in Quichotte are also to be explored.
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Book Chapters by Atri Majumder
Mapping Memory in the Wake of the Posthuman: India, Canada and the World, 2023
Social media engenders an extension of identity, a simulacrum that encompasses and constitutes th... more Social media engenders an extension of identity, a simulacrum that encompasses and constitutes the notion of the Self. Byung-Chul Han observes how identities reverberate within a narcissistic echo chamber that sustains and simulates a faux sense of authenticity. Social media has permeated and redefined identities, rendering them volatile and precarious. Andrew Hoskins' concept of network memory foregrounds the emergence of digital media that pervades and affects memories. This entails the formation and mediation of memories that are refracted through the digital hyperreality. This paper argues that social media has become a mnemotechnic, and memories are immured within a virtual space that eludes the contours of humanist agency. In this context, the characters in Salman Rushdie's novel Quichotte evoke the notion of destabilised identities, legitimised and affected by virtual spaces. The digital mise en abyme that constructs a subjectivity untethered from its materiality, is symptomatic of a posthumanist entity. This paper would attempt to delineate the pivotal role of social media in fabricating and perpetuating identities through the mediation of digital memories.
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Emerging Trends in Post Pandemic Literary and Cultural Studies, 2023
The transmutation of memories within fictional spaces is contiguous with the formation and metamo... more The transmutation of memories within fictional spaces is contiguous with the formation and metamorphosis of identities, which are elided by the exclusionary politics of historiography. The ephemerality and immediacy of memories gain substantiality through the mnemonic devices embedded in particular spatiotemporal configurations. This paper would explore how identities are forged and even engendered through memories, which are inextricably interweaved with spaces - both narrative and geographical. Salman Rushdie’s historical novel The Enchantress of Florence delineates the instrumental role of spaces in fostering cosmopolitan identities and reinscribing them within a malleable history. The juxtaposition of the psychogeographic cartographies of Renaissance Florence and Fatehpur Sikri, affords a narrative space that sustains the historicity of the fabricated identities. The liminality of dreams and memories are symptomatic of the dialectics of memory and history, and the transgressive spaces of potentiality lying in-between. The politics of memory inexorably entails the questions of historicity and (in)authenticity. This study argues for the consecration of identities through the aesthetic distance of collective and subjective memories reconfigured through spatiotemporal migration and enrooting. It would be contextualised with Pierre Nora’s conceptualisation of lieux de memoire. We would thus seek to establish the affectivity of spaces on memories and the concomitant trajectories of the identities – constructed, legitimized and crystallized through memories.
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Trends in Postcolonial Language, Literature and Culture, 2020
The 'Soviet Bloc' states situated behind the infamous 'Iron Curtain', which were under the oppres... more The 'Soviet Bloc' states situated behind the infamous 'Iron Curtain', which were under the oppressive shadow of the erstwhile U. S. S. R. had undergone brutal oppression till most of them gained independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviets undermined the indigenous cultures of these states and attempted to establish a homogenous Russian identity. The Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich attempts to construct postcolonial identities through an alternative historical discourse to the official hegemonic historiography. By employing the genre of oral history, Alexievich foregrounds the individual identities of ordinary people embedded within the broader socio-political contexts. The series of books collectively termed as 'Voices of Utopia' deal with issues such as the experiences of women and children in the Second World War, the Soviet Afghan war (1979-1989), the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In these 'novels in voices' she delineates the emotional conditions of the people who have survived traumatic and harrowing events through eyewitness accounts, testimonies and confessions. These testimonies bear the potential to act as vehicles for social change in the postcolonial states as they reveal the actual realities of colonial oppression and the erosion of distinct identities. This paper examines how Svetlana Alexievich traces the postcolonial identities by recreating a history which has been indifferent to the subjective impressions and emotions of ordinary individuals who have lived through extraordinary circumstances.
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Papers by Atri Majumder
Book Chapters by Atri Majumder