12 Issues of Local and Global in the New Literatures in English

Dr. Payel Chattopadhyay Mukherjee

This chapter aims to:

• Discuss the interrelation of the “local” and “global” in the new literatures of postcolonial times
• Explore the different layers that these terms elucidate with reference to literary readings
• Study the wide gamut of thematic associations that these terms inculcate
• Summary

The present module discusses the implication of the terms “local” and “global”, exploring their signification in the formation of the new literatures of the postcolonial times with a focus on South Asian Fiction. The implication of these terms is interrelated to the growth of new literatures that question the politics of belonging and appropriates the individual within the discontent of the place and space. With an ever growing quest for identity, the issues of the global and local firmly infuse in the tension of being and becoming a postcolonial individual.

The Local and the Global

When Rabindranath Tagore wrote a novel The Home and the World in 1916, the terms local and global were not much in vogue, even though there was a systematic understanding of their implication. In the postcolonial and postmodern times that we are living, the words “local” and “global” have evolved newer meanings. New Literatures in English have  emerged as a response both to the colonial imperialism and also as repertoire of the globalized scenario that have touched human lives and societies. While postcolonial literatures have underscored the rootedness of indigenous cultures and the ways of negotiation with the language and ethos of the global other, there is a consistent discontent within the formation of these new literatures. On one hand, these discontents legitimize the validity of studying these literatures as “new” and on the other hand there is a persistent effort to maintain and critique the newness. Standing at this crossroad of the “new” that challenges to reconsider the gaps and lapses within the purview of literary interventions, the dialogue of the local with the global facilitates the production of a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the changing times. It is important to note that, the terms local and global is not only limited to the regionalism inherent to their connotation, but also to the psychological parameters of being simultaneously placed within home and beyond. What we need to underscore here, is the implication or rather the wish to belong, to question, and critique both the limitation of being and the politics of becoming individuals with an uncanny sense of freedom and identity. It should be realized, that these terms are not absolutely opposite to each other, nor can one be subsumed in the other, but despite their individual existence, a possibility to closely interact or rather create dialogical overlapping, cannot be altogether rejected.

In contemporary postcolonial narratives, the dialogue between home and belonging is a complex one with individuals negotiating within alternatives of ‘space’ and ‘place’. With migration, displacement and loss of roots being some of the common aspects of postcolonial universe; the concept of home hold a significant space in South Asian narratives. The postcolonial situation invokes the spirit of alienation, migration, there are the conflicting spaces of discontents counterbalancing between the regional (local) and the cosmopolitan (global) sense of identity formation in an individual. An individual, I argue, suffers the postcolonial dilemma of choice between natal “roots” (local) and global “routes”. In this module, I shall discuss the different metaphors that construe the dilemma and dichotomy of the local and the global. It shall address the diverse ways in which postcolonial fiction intercede and represent socio-cultural conditions – the local and global to offer a critical analysis of the ideas of home, nation, identity, memory, belonging, displacement, gender, and religion.

Home as a site of postcolonial dilemma

Home has been discussed in several literary fictions by “colonizers, colonized, newly independent people and immigrants” (George, “Prolouge”, 2). Although the concept of home connotes an inherent sense of shelter and rootedness as quite opposed to the idea of traveling, it might be interesting to reassess the idea of home as a site of postcolonial dilemma that intersects the local and the global.

As imagined in fiction, “home is a desire that is fulfilled or denied in varying measure to the subjects (both the fictional characters and readers) constructed by the narrative. As such, “home” moves among several axes, and yet it is usually represented as fixed, rooted, stable – the very antithesis of travel. (George, “Prolouge”, The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-century Fiction, 2)

Home in the postcolonial situation is fraught with the insider outsider ambiguity as Lalita Pandit says in “Introduction: Local, Global, Postcolonial”: “Finally the postcolonial must complicate and radicalize the question of the distinction between insider and outsider, between inside and outside? the question, that is, of dichotomy itself” (Pandit, 5). The insider/outsider dichotomy is intricately interwoven in the postcolonial narrative where ‘home’ functions as a locus of discontent and dilemma of ‘belongingness’. Avtar Brah discusses the interaction between ‘location’ and ‘home’ questioning the legitimacy of belongingness. She analyzes the idea of a postcolonial ‘home’ and the conditions that lead to becoming the home becoming a place of “one’s own”. This own-ness is the sense of belonging that also carries with itself the identity of the person who lives in that ‘home’. The politics of location decides between home as a site of desire and home as a site of imposed identity: “When does a location become home? What is the difference between ‘feeling at home’ and staking claim to a place as one’s own? It is quite possible to feel at home in a place and, yet, the experience of social exclusions may inhabit public proclamations of the place as home”.

In postcolonial texts, “home” is often experienced as having a metonymic existence that encompasses intersecting identities. Home is a complex metaphor for consciousness’s as well as for the process of acculturation. The idea of home co-exists with memories, counterbalancing a sense of both “belonging” and “non-belonging”.

Homes and home-countries are exclusive. […] The term “home-country” in itself expresses a complex yoking of ideological apparatuses considered necessary for the existence of subjects: the notion of belonging, of having a home, and a place of one’s own. […] “Location” in the context of this study suggests the variable nature of both “the home” and “the self”, for both are negotiated stances whose shapes are entirely ruled by the site from which they are defined. (George, “Prolouge”, The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-century Fiction, 2)

The emphasis is to develop an understanding of the plural identities that open up in such spaces where local/regional niches aspire to engage in dialogues with the global (Breckenridge et al., 8). The subsequent sections illustrate the issues of the local and global through a range of texts represents the new literatures of the postcolonial times. Through a reading of these narratives we will focus on; (a) The thematic metaphors that embody the global-local dilemma, (b) The multiple denotations of the global and local in the new literatures of South Asia, (c) The postcolonial individual, and, (d) Politics of belonging.

Beyond the local: The anxieties of displacement

In The Empire Writes Back , Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin point out that “a major feature of post-colonial literature is the concern with placement and displacement” .(Ascroft et.al, 8). In Taslima Nasrin’s Lajja (1994) Sudhamoy faces the dilemma of choosing between two homes. One is a distant ancestral land loaded with nostalgia, while the other is a future settlement laden with hopes but a forceful identity. The concept of local and global is contingent upon the human realization of in-subsumable transformations or what Terry Eagleton calls, “narrow fixation on difference” (Literary Theory, 205). The concept of local evolves from two perspectives: the idea of regional attachment and, idea of psychological alienation from the place that was once integral to one’s belonging. However, we need to  note that the concept of global and local need not limit itself to the either of the binary but  can pluralistically identify with a sense of loss of place and the loss of space simultaneously. Nasrin’s Lajja situates itself on this on the complicated concept of loss where identification of the individual sense of space conflicts with the given-ness of place and an imposed sense of identity.

If there is no security in your own country, where in this world can we go looking for it? I cannot run away from my homeland. You go if you want to. I am not leaving the property of my forefathers. Coconut and betel nut plantations, yards and yards of rich paddy fields, a house that stands on over two bighas of land…I cannot leave all these to become a refugee on the platforms of Sealdah station (Nasrin, Lajja, 6)

Although the concept of the global does not emerge as an antithetical to the local, it does introduce an anxiety of the unknown, something that echoes absolute non-familiarity and alienation. The local on the other hand, signifies a sense of comfort and an uncritical sense of belonging.

Regional Affiliation and Identity

The emergence of postcolonial nation-states, according to Homi Bhabha, saw the initiation of the ambivalence in its construction where there is an underlying instability/inconsistency regarding the idea of nation, its ethnic characteristics, and the people who inhabit within its national boundaries (Bhabha, Nation and Narration, 1). Bhabha describes the cultural milieu of postcolonial nation as a “transitional social reality” where one might question the definition of national – ethnicity in face of the haphazard opening and reopening of closed spaces with the intermingling of cultures within and beyond boundaries. The question of identification is never the affirmation of a pre given identity, never a self-fulfilling prophecy; it is always the production of an image of identity and the transformation of the subject in assuming that image. The demand of identification- that is, to be for another- entails the representation of the subject in the differentiating order of otherness. (Bhabha, “Interrogating Identity”, The Location of Culture, 45)

Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace (2000) is a panoramic narrative which covers three generations and incorporates multiple themes, one of them being exile and isolation. King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat of Konbaung Dynasty in Burma along with their children were exiled to a relatively secluded place called Ratnagiri in Maharashtra. Ghosh talks about the alienation associated with loss of one’s native place and the role of memory in appropriating such feeling of isolation. King Thibaw, along with all the members of the royal family is deported from Mandalay not to any big cities like Kolkata or Madras, but to a remote place like Ratnagiri. The family along with few servants is kept under house arrest with prohibition even on the prospect of their children getting married and continuing their lineage in future. The figure of King Thibaw appears in Ghosh’s narrative as that of a survivor who has remained alive but has been robbed off the essence of living. He shrinks back into his own isolated state of existence and never proactively thinks of any kind of resistance to the colonial masters. The kind of alienation that Thibaw draws through his isolated state is one of an oppressed native who is helplessly committed in remaining silent and withdrawn in face of his imposed exile. He even refuses to react to the pleas by the people of Ratnagiri to bless their young children. The exile renders him to become an inert object. Perhaps, King Thibaw is one of the many examples on whom colonialism has the worst effect. However, on the other hand, Queen Supayalat is a proud bearer of the royal blood who refuses to be controlled and even goes to the extent of allowing her eldest daughter give birth to a child conceived by her after an illicit affair Sawant, one of the servants in the palace. She lashes out at the English officer and declares that she would not let the colonizers have the privilege of seeing them perish without leaving a mark, instead makes it clear that no one except her is allowed to control her house at least if not her kingdom.

We were the first to be imprisoned in the name of their progress; millions more will follow. This is what awaits us all: this is how we will all end – as prisoners, in shantytowns born of the plague. A hundred years hence you will read the indictment of Europe’s greed in the difference between the Kingdom of Siam and the state of our own enslaved realm.

Ghosh discusses the effects of colonialism giving a picture of the horrifying incidents that were rampant in the South Asian region. Not only were the native rulers deported far away from their kingdom, but also they were kept isolated in such obscure places that life almost came to a standstill and there was nothing left to, but to keep on waiting for death. Through King Thibaw’s life, Ghosh draws the ugly face of colonization which banked its existence on capitalism and extreme economic exploitation of the colonies.

Mapping memories

Memory is an important aspect in postcolonial literature. It is often through memory that an individual tries to negotiate her present with past experiences. Memory serves as a dialogical ground of interpreting the individuals past through the circumstances of the present. Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography (2002) revolves around an obsession for drawing maps and living on the realm of its imaginative reality. The novel is an emotional journey of two young people who have intense love for each other and for their city, Karachi in Pakistan. Maps serve as an important trope in our understanding of places and the sense of belonging associated with it. Karim and Raheen are the two major characters through whom Shamsie proceeds to develop her idea of how maps become a tool of not only registering places, but also revisiting memories. In Kartography, the idea of the local is interpreted through a connecting link with the places beyond. This sense of traveling the world with a longing to simultaneously belong to one’s native memories, situate the subtle interrelations of the local with the global. Maps figure as symbolically representing two things – connections between different places and the boundaries that exist between these places. Karim is fascinated by maps and says that the world is “like a giant jigsaw” where all the places are connecting. He says: “See: Pakistan connects to Iran which connects to Turkey which connects to Bulgaria which connects to Yugoslavia which connects to Austria which connects to France.”

Interestingly, a map juxtaposes globalization and regionalization. Karim’s wish  is  to  become a cartographer. He seeks Raheen’s help in developing a digital map of Karachi, incorporating every minute detail like the sounds of the Karachiites, emphasizes the fact that unknowingly or deliberately the map of Karachi, for Karim, is like preserving the soul of Karachi. However, Karim also does not annul the possibility of the boundaries. Boundaries to him are as real as the existence of different countries in the world. Another significant symbolic association with the map in Kartography is that maps here also play a role in illustrating stories. Perhaps, Shamsie is trying to portray the dual existence of the map in locating a place, and also positioning its impact on our imagination. Since maps are representations of the actual geographical or physical landscape, it is through maps that we arrive to an idea of the place before reaching the place itself. As Raheen explained: “So maps weren’t about going from point A to point B; they were about helping someone hear the heartbeat of a place.” 

However, quite ironically maps also figure as imagery for appropriating  differences.  Shamsie points at the internal differences, of boundaries of the mind which makes one person appear as an immigrant while another becomes a native. It refers to the politics that create  and destroy borders and thereby change modifies the maps. Through the art of drawing a map, it is the map-maker in Karim, who tries to unravel the unspoken fact that goes into defining the boundaries of different nations. The process of deciphering maps led to the discovery of their own rootedness towards each other and also towards the country,  especially the place where they belong to, that is, Karachi.

From the global

In the new literatures, the global interacts with the local and vice versa. There is a gaze and counter gaze involved in the quest to locate one’s identity and sense of belonging within the dichotomy of place and space. Exposure to global experiences creates newer perspectives to critique the discourses of the local. In the process, the local along with its limitations seeks to question its own complacency and aspire for a meaningful realization of its identity. Manjushri Thapa’s Seasons of Flight (2010) is a search for solace in the unknown which faces a futile end owing to the sheer impossibility of finding ‘home’ in the alien land. Thapa narrates the story through Prema longing for Nepal as a troubled home where she cannot afford to live. Unlike her sister, Bijaya, who joins the Maoists rebels and even gives birth to a child father by a rebel leader, Prema takes the routes to the States where she survives in spite of being alienated yet nostalgic. Prema is never psychologically exiled from Nepal and keeps coming back to Nepal in her memories, her worries, nostalgia, and imagination. Prema’s obsession with the concept of ideal Nepal, makes her move to and fro, mostly in her mental domain and sometimes in reality.

However, it is not only Prema’s memory that oscillates between Nepal and States. She      also wanders between the ties of commitment and moments of unreasonable solitude. It is as if, the fear of being tied down. While Prema refuses to be rooted in Nepal, migrates to America, brings along with the ‘shaligram’ which belonged to her mother, but is not able to relocate herself completely. Her life moves along in a cyclic process where she starts from Nepal, moves to states, comes back again only to go back. Yet, there seems to be no end to this. Even though there is an urge on the part of Louis to wish probe Prema further for a  more stable version of relationship, she does not seem to comply to his wishes much.There is a subtle resemblance between Prema and Nepal. Both of them are unable to sustain stability and are in a state of unrest. For Prema it is her longing for her family, her country, her familiar landscapes. Although, there is an inherent alienation embedded in Prema’s idea of Nepal, so much that she is not even able to commit herself to any relationship. Yet, she has a therapeutic connection with the country. It is only to Nepal that she can go back to. For Prema, the nature of Nepal is her own, and she is unable to find the same kind of solace for USA landscapes.

The global native

Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) situates itself on this on the complicated juncture of the postcolonial phase where identification of the individual sense of space counter interacts with the places conforming to realities associated with national identities. The novel combines multiple thematic strands of home, places, boundaries, and overlapping states of mental existence. It (the novel) seems to underline the idea of layered identities that revolve around the notion of shared spatial affiliations. Hamid challenges the interfaces of diverse ideologies that form one’s identity. Changez is at once a Princetonian, thinking of himself metaphorically as a ‘prince’ in the elite campus, and also a member of the Islamic community, living in US as well as surviving in the global scenario.The simultaneous existence of two homes in Changez’s life contributes to the spiral structure of the narrative. It begins with Lahore in Pakistan, and then travels all the way to the west in Princeton, New Jersey and New York. With the turn of events, the narrator shifts back and forth to Pakistan and New York, only to settle down in Pakistan, especially in Lahore at the end of the novel. Changez’s relation with Lahore and New York is not only complex but also plays an important in shaping the course of his life. It is the place that chooses him to stay there and make a home rather than allowing him to make a free choice. In the new literatures, the wish to return to one’s native place is often counterbalanced by the experiences of being exposed to the global scenario, and yet feel alienated within its broader discoure. His journey back to Pakistan is a kind of returning back to his ‘roots’. Although his return has both the sense of rejection and defiance, Changez is not able to erase the subtle liking that he has for New York.

The aspect of territoriality is one of the most impinging factors in understanding postcolonial cultural milieu. Territoriality entails a sense of rightful belonging and to some extent is defined by the geographical contours of the place. As discussed earlier, the increased discrepancy between “places of love” and “love of places” led to what we might now refer as the “unsettled horizons” for the postcolonial individual living in both the worlds with a urge to locate fixity in “migrant homes”

For despite my mother’s request, and my knowledge of the difficulties it could well present me at immigration, I had not shaved my two-week old beard. It was, perhaps, a form of protest on my part, a symbol of my identity, or perhaps I sought to remind myself of the reality I had just left behind.

Lahore, on the other hand, appears initially as a surreal land of picture perfect childhood and ancestral lineage. Changez too, like most other immigrants, finds his culture, his home in Lahore at Pakistan, as a trope for creating a fascinating world with typical rituals, lifestyle, conventions that mark a sharp contrast to the western culture he is in.

It was only after so doing that I saw my house properly again, appreciating its enduring grandeur, its unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm. Mughal miniatures and ancient carpets graced its reception rooms; an excellent library abutted its veranda. It was far from impoverished; indeed, it was rich with history.

Changez’s quest for a home in America opens up the dialogical space of a postcolonial citizen interacting with West. His living in the First World nation, enjoying the favorable opportunities possibly has been felt like “given” but never accepted as a part of belonging to it. Hamid’s novel portrays this focal obsession and dichotomies associated with ‘places’ and ‘homes’. There is a consistent shift of focus between New York and Lahore. The narrator Changez seems to be equally possessed by these two cities and the homes that he tries to identify within the periphery of these two places.

Conclusion

The issues of the global and local in new literatures have emerged as one of the core concern of the postcolonial discourse. New literatures of the postcolonial phase have inherited the complexity of being connected both to the regional affiliations as a part of one’s native identity and also inculcated the aspiration of understanding the world beyond. This duality constitutes the heterogeneity of voices that evolve from postcolonial narratives, appropriating the individual at the crux of an inescapable dichotomy of places and spaces, memory and experience, the native and the global. The new literatures facilitate both the articulation of the anxieties in experiencing the inherent transitions of places and the hope of creating a space of one’s own in between the overlapping identities.