The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin&... more The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin's (2000) What the Body Remembers in the context of feminist narratology. Feminist narratology posits that gender must and does impact the course of a narrative and, in a sense, accounts for the difference and specificity of women's writing. Narrativization is one of the commonest ways of applying an order and perspective to experience. When the pen is in women's hands, the story is bound to color differently, to order time and space differently. If narratology is the science of narrative, feminist narratology acknowledges the difference between a man's writing and a woman's writing and focuses on the effect of gender at the level of discourse. A feminist narratological analysis of Baldwin's novel would attempt to show how the narrative technique used by her helps her to tell her story differently.Baldwin's What the Body Remembers tells a personal story, and simultaneously retells the history of India's partition as a woman's story in a woman's language. This paper shall examine Baldwin's treatment of both in the context of certain relevant definitions of feminist narratology. Warhol (1996) defined it as "the study of narrative structures and strategies in the context of cultural constructions of gender." Mezei (1996) was able to isolate the essence of feminist narratology when she spoke vehemently of the importance of focusing on the context of how stories are told, by whom, and for whom. A feminist narratological exploration of the appropriate medium and method of Baldwin's narration would ask certain basic questions of it which are explicitly stated by Knutson (1989, 14):Who is sensing, seeing, hearing and interpreting? Based on what body of knowledge? Is there a woman's body in this story? Finally, at the level of text or words, a narrative agent can comment, argue, describe or render ironic. How is the power of the narrator represented or used? Who is speaking to whom, and what kind of world is created in the process? Would a woman be comfortable in this world? Or is a male writer relying on the power of the masculine generic to naturalize the fact that a man is speaking to other men in a world where women are objects or obstacles?This paper examines how Baldwin exemplifies a woman's sensing, seeing, hearing, and interpreting to inform and inspire the telling of not only a personal story, but also the epic tale of the Indian partition. It shall rely on "reading in detail" to apply the narratological categories of plot structure, characterization, point of view, focalization, and voice to scrutinize the text under examination for feminist manipulations open to gender-conscious interpretations.In an interview with Rennicks, Fiction Editor of Borders.Com, Baldwin1 mentioned that her writing rose "from a sense that there is something missing, a subject, a story, or an area that has received too little attention, and What the Body Remembers rose from that same dissatisfaction. The partition of India in 1947 into India, East Pakistan, and West Pakistan has received academic attention, but you can count the number of novels in English about it on the fingers of one hand."Here is an observation the truth of which registers immediately. Yet what is even more significant is that we rarely come across a segment of history viewed exclusively from the perspective of a woman. As the Publishers Weekly (1999) notes: "Few enough novels deal with the wrenching period in Pakistan's history known as partition, fewer still filter these events through a woman's eyes. Baldwin's What the Body Remembers does both. . . ." A similar comment is made by India Today (Chopra 1999) when it states: "For the subcontinent, Partition was the most momentous event of the twentieth century. But the men who were affected by it . . . have written most of the literature. This is a woman's perspective. And because women suffered most when their homes were uprooted, this book becomes a more intimate account. …
The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin&... more The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin's (2000) What the Body Remembers in the context of feminist narratology. Feminist narratology posits that gender must and does impact the course of a narrative and, in a sense, accounts for the difference and specificity of women's writing. Narrativization is one of the commonest ways of applying an order and perspective to experience. When the pen is in women's hands, the story is bound to color differently, to order time and space differently. If narratology is the science of narrative, feminist narratology acknowledges the difference between a man's writing and a woman's writing and focuses on the effect of gender at the level of discourse. A feminist narratological analysis of Baldwin's novel would attempt to show how the narrative technique used by her helps her to tell her story differently.Baldwin's What the Body Remembers tells a personal story, and simultaneously retells the history of India's partition as a woman's story in a woman's language. This paper shall examine Baldwin's treatment of both in the context of certain relevant definitions of feminist narratology. Warhol (1996) defined it as "the study of narrative structures and strategies in the context of cultural constructions of gender." Mezei (1996) was able to isolate the essence of feminist narratology when she spoke vehemently of the importance of focusing on the context of how stories are told, by whom, and for whom. A feminist narratological exploration of the appropriate medium and method of Baldwin's narration would ask certain basic questions of it which are explicitly stated by Knutson (1989, 14):Who is sensing, seeing, hearing and interpreting? Based on what body of knowledge? Is there a woman's body in this story? Finally, at the level of text or words, a narrative agent can comment, argue, describe or render ironic. How is the power of the narrator represented or used? Who is speaking to whom, and what kind of world is created in the process? Would a woman be comfortable in this world? Or is a male writer relying on the power of the masculine generic to naturalize the fact that a man is speaking to other men in a world where women are objects or obstacles?This paper examines how Baldwin exemplifies a woman's sensing, seeing, hearing, and interpreting to inform and inspire the telling of not only a personal story, but also the epic tale of the Indian partition. It shall rely on "reading in detail" to apply the narratological categories of plot structure, characterization, point of view, focalization, and voice to scrutinize the text under examination for feminist manipulations open to gender-conscious interpretations.In an interview with Rennicks, Fiction Editor of Borders.Com, Baldwin1 mentioned that her writing rose "from a sense that there is something missing, a subject, a story, or an area that has received too little attention, and What the Body Remembers rose from that same dissatisfaction. The partition of India in 1947 into India, East Pakistan, and West Pakistan has received academic attention, but you can count the number of novels in English about it on the fingers of one hand."Here is an observation the truth of which registers immediately. Yet what is even more significant is that we rarely come across a segment of history viewed exclusively from the perspective of a woman. As the Publishers Weekly (1999) notes: "Few enough novels deal with the wrenching period in Pakistan's history known as partition, fewer still filter these events through a woman's eyes. Baldwin's What the Body Remembers does both. . . ." A similar comment is made by India Today (Chopra 1999) when it states: "For the subcontinent, Partition was the most momentous event of the twentieth century. But the men who were affected by it . . . have written most of the literature. This is a woman's perspective. And because women suffered most when their homes were uprooted, this book becomes a more intimate account. …
The diasporic lens often misses the ground zero reality of the cultural space of the Indian multi... more The diasporic lens often misses the ground zero reality of the cultural space of the Indian multicultural dynamic. Salman Rushdie dramatized the issue of “space-consciousness” or “borderline-consciousness” of Kashmir, Bangladesh and Bombay in Midnight’s Children from an emotional or cognitive mode of mapping. As a mestize, Rushdie’s portrait of Indian culture, history and politics can never be an accurate estimate of the vastness of the Indian experience. Rushdie as a privileged post-colonial cultural relativist viewed Indian multicultural ethnicity from the top (a colonial male gaze). With the help of the compare and contrast research technique, this paper will try to comprehend the limitations of the diasporic cognitive cultural mapping of Midnight’s Children as opposed to the strengths of a cartographic landscape assessed through discourse analysis. The comprehension of the “Oriental Crisis” in the domain of literature and cultural studies could enable a gauging of the research g...
The diasporic lens often misses the ground zero reality of the cultural space of the Indian multi... more The diasporic lens often misses the ground zero reality of the cultural space of the Indian multicultural dynamic. Salman Rushdie dramatized the issue of “space-consciousness” or “borderline-consciousness” of Kashmir, Bangladesh and Bombay in Midnight’s Children from an emotional or cognitive mode of mapping. As a mestize, Rushdie’s portrait of Indian culture, history and politics can never be an accurate estimate of the vastness of the Indian experience. Rushdie as a privileged post-colonial cultural relativist viewed Indian multicultural ethnicity from the top (a colonial male gaze). With the help of the compare and contrast research technique, this paper will try to comprehend the limitations of the diasporic cognitive cultural mapping of Midnight’s Children as opposed to the strengths of a cartographic landscape assessed through discourse analysis. The comprehension of the “Oriental Crisis” in the domain of literature and cultural studies could enable a gauging of the research g...
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021
Indian literature has always been governed by classical norms. Literature has been divided into ‘... more Indian literature has always been governed by classical norms. Literature has been divided into ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture’. The non-Dalit writing revolves around ‘rasa’ and the motive is ‘art for art’s sake’. Dalit aestheticism is ‘art for life’s sake’. When certain forms and styles are applied imitating Sanskrit poetics, Shakespearean language or Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, literature is considered to be following beauty parameters that are considered to be necessary for artistic pleasure. This kind of claim of holding traditional Indian aesthetics as a law book for all kinds of literature cannot be validated. The assertion of mainstream aesthetics as aesthetics for pan India is bound to exclude the truth of disregarded subjects. There is a need for Dalit literature to follow alternative aesthetics as the writings are the real story of pain and survival. How can pain be read for the purpose of pleasure? In the case of Dalit literature, the artistic yardsticks are not destroyed rat...
The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin&... more The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin's (2000) What the Body Remembers in the context of feminist narratology. Feminist narratology posits that gender must and does impact the course of a narrative and, in a sense, accounts for the difference and specificity of women's writing. Narrativization is one of the commonest ways of applying an order and perspective to experience. When the pen is in women's hands, the story is bound to color differently, to order time and space differently. If narratology is the science of narrative, feminist narratology acknowledges the difference between a man's writing and a woman's writing and focuses on the effect of gender at the level of discourse. A feminist narratological analysis of Baldwin's novel would attempt to show how the narrative technique used by her helps her to tell her story differently.Baldwin's What the Body Remembers tells a personal story, and si...
The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin&... more The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin's (2000) What the Body Remembers in the context of feminist narratology. Feminist narratology posits that gender must and does impact the course of a narrative and, in a sense, accounts for the difference and specificity of women's writing. Narrativization is one of the commonest ways of applying an order and perspective to experience. When the pen is in women's hands, the story is bound to color differently, to order time and space differently. If narratology is the science of narrative, feminist narratology acknowledges the difference between a man's writing and a woman's writing and focuses on the effect of gender at the level of discourse. A feminist narratological analysis of Baldwin's novel would attempt to show how the narrative technique used by her helps her to tell her story differently.Baldwin's What the Body Remembers tells a personal story, and si...
The main object of my paper is to co-relate the decoded signified idea of Henry Louis Gates Jr. a... more The main object of my paper is to co-relate the decoded signified idea of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Mestiza Consciousness of Gloria Andalzua with the referential detail from the text Beloved by Toni Morrison. The co-relating factor of both these theories is based on cause and effect issues. The decoded signified ideas of African-American history, myth, folklore, cultural values and moral codes have impacted a lot to shape an inclusive conscious idea which is close enough to the concept of “Third World Consciousness”. European history and theories alone are inadequate to express the true sense of African American culture, literature and its moral values. Toni Morrison’s basic concern “is to move beyond the systematic or structural patterns” of those theories and history ( Rigney 7). The African American ethnic community has always suffered from an identity crisis caused by the past slave tradition, racism, sexism, dehumanized moral and cultural values. In Beloved, Morrison depicted a...
The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin&... more The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin's (2000) What the Body Remembers in the context of feminist narratology. Feminist narratology posits that gender must and does impact the course of a narrative and, in a sense, accounts for the difference and specificity of women's writing. Narrativization is one of the commonest ways of applying an order and perspective to experience. When the pen is in women's hands, the story is bound to color differently, to order time and space differently. If narratology is the science of narrative, feminist narratology acknowledges the difference between a man's writing and a woman's writing and focuses on the effect of gender at the level of discourse. A feminist narratological analysis of Baldwin's novel would attempt to show how the narrative technique used by her helps her to tell her story differently.Baldwin's What the Body Remembers tells a personal story, and simultaneously retells the history of India's partition as a woman's story in a woman's language. This paper shall examine Baldwin's treatment of both in the context of certain relevant definitions of feminist narratology. Warhol (1996) defined it as "the study of narrative structures and strategies in the context of cultural constructions of gender." Mezei (1996) was able to isolate the essence of feminist narratology when she spoke vehemently of the importance of focusing on the context of how stories are told, by whom, and for whom. A feminist narratological exploration of the appropriate medium and method of Baldwin's narration would ask certain basic questions of it which are explicitly stated by Knutson (1989, 14):Who is sensing, seeing, hearing and interpreting? Based on what body of knowledge? Is there a woman's body in this story? Finally, at the level of text or words, a narrative agent can comment, argue, describe or render ironic. How is the power of the narrator represented or used? Who is speaking to whom, and what kind of world is created in the process? Would a woman be comfortable in this world? Or is a male writer relying on the power of the masculine generic to naturalize the fact that a man is speaking to other men in a world where women are objects or obstacles?This paper examines how Baldwin exemplifies a woman's sensing, seeing, hearing, and interpreting to inform and inspire the telling of not only a personal story, but also the epic tale of the Indian partition. It shall rely on "reading in detail" to apply the narratological categories of plot structure, characterization, point of view, focalization, and voice to scrutinize the text under examination for feminist manipulations open to gender-conscious interpretations.In an interview with Rennicks, Fiction Editor of Borders.Com, Baldwin1 mentioned that her writing rose "from a sense that there is something missing, a subject, a story, or an area that has received too little attention, and What the Body Remembers rose from that same dissatisfaction. The partition of India in 1947 into India, East Pakistan, and West Pakistan has received academic attention, but you can count the number of novels in English about it on the fingers of one hand."Here is an observation the truth of which registers immediately. Yet what is even more significant is that we rarely come across a segment of history viewed exclusively from the perspective of a woman. As the Publishers Weekly (1999) notes: "Few enough novels deal with the wrenching period in Pakistan's history known as partition, fewer still filter these events through a woman's eyes. Baldwin's What the Body Remembers does both. . . ." A similar comment is made by India Today (Chopra 1999) when it states: "For the subcontinent, Partition was the most momentous event of the twentieth century. But the men who were affected by it . . . have written most of the literature. This is a woman's perspective. And because women suffered most when their homes were uprooted, this book becomes a more intimate account. …
The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin&... more The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin's (2000) What the Body Remembers in the context of feminist narratology. Feminist narratology posits that gender must and does impact the course of a narrative and, in a sense, accounts for the difference and specificity of women's writing. Narrativization is one of the commonest ways of applying an order and perspective to experience. When the pen is in women's hands, the story is bound to color differently, to order time and space differently. If narratology is the science of narrative, feminist narratology acknowledges the difference between a man's writing and a woman's writing and focuses on the effect of gender at the level of discourse. A feminist narratological analysis of Baldwin's novel would attempt to show how the narrative technique used by her helps her to tell her story differently.Baldwin's What the Body Remembers tells a personal story, and simultaneously retells the history of India's partition as a woman's story in a woman's language. This paper shall examine Baldwin's treatment of both in the context of certain relevant definitions of feminist narratology. Warhol (1996) defined it as "the study of narrative structures and strategies in the context of cultural constructions of gender." Mezei (1996) was able to isolate the essence of feminist narratology when she spoke vehemently of the importance of focusing on the context of how stories are told, by whom, and for whom. A feminist narratological exploration of the appropriate medium and method of Baldwin's narration would ask certain basic questions of it which are explicitly stated by Knutson (1989, 14):Who is sensing, seeing, hearing and interpreting? Based on what body of knowledge? Is there a woman's body in this story? Finally, at the level of text or words, a narrative agent can comment, argue, describe or render ironic. How is the power of the narrator represented or used? Who is speaking to whom, and what kind of world is created in the process? Would a woman be comfortable in this world? Or is a male writer relying on the power of the masculine generic to naturalize the fact that a man is speaking to other men in a world where women are objects or obstacles?This paper examines how Baldwin exemplifies a woman's sensing, seeing, hearing, and interpreting to inform and inspire the telling of not only a personal story, but also the epic tale of the Indian partition. It shall rely on "reading in detail" to apply the narratological categories of plot structure, characterization, point of view, focalization, and voice to scrutinize the text under examination for feminist manipulations open to gender-conscious interpretations.In an interview with Rennicks, Fiction Editor of Borders.Com, Baldwin1 mentioned that her writing rose "from a sense that there is something missing, a subject, a story, or an area that has received too little attention, and What the Body Remembers rose from that same dissatisfaction. The partition of India in 1947 into India, East Pakistan, and West Pakistan has received academic attention, but you can count the number of novels in English about it on the fingers of one hand."Here is an observation the truth of which registers immediately. Yet what is even more significant is that we rarely come across a segment of history viewed exclusively from the perspective of a woman. As the Publishers Weekly (1999) notes: "Few enough novels deal with the wrenching period in Pakistan's history known as partition, fewer still filter these events through a woman's eyes. Baldwin's What the Body Remembers does both. . . ." A similar comment is made by India Today (Chopra 1999) when it states: "For the subcontinent, Partition was the most momentous event of the twentieth century. But the men who were affected by it . . . have written most of the literature. This is a woman's perspective. And because women suffered most when their homes were uprooted, this book becomes a more intimate account. …
The diasporic lens often misses the ground zero reality of the cultural space of the Indian multi... more The diasporic lens often misses the ground zero reality of the cultural space of the Indian multicultural dynamic. Salman Rushdie dramatized the issue of “space-consciousness” or “borderline-consciousness” of Kashmir, Bangladesh and Bombay in Midnight’s Children from an emotional or cognitive mode of mapping. As a mestize, Rushdie’s portrait of Indian culture, history and politics can never be an accurate estimate of the vastness of the Indian experience. Rushdie as a privileged post-colonial cultural relativist viewed Indian multicultural ethnicity from the top (a colonial male gaze). With the help of the compare and contrast research technique, this paper will try to comprehend the limitations of the diasporic cognitive cultural mapping of Midnight’s Children as opposed to the strengths of a cartographic landscape assessed through discourse analysis. The comprehension of the “Oriental Crisis” in the domain of literature and cultural studies could enable a gauging of the research g...
The diasporic lens often misses the ground zero reality of the cultural space of the Indian multi... more The diasporic lens often misses the ground zero reality of the cultural space of the Indian multicultural dynamic. Salman Rushdie dramatized the issue of “space-consciousness” or “borderline-consciousness” of Kashmir, Bangladesh and Bombay in Midnight’s Children from an emotional or cognitive mode of mapping. As a mestize, Rushdie’s portrait of Indian culture, history and politics can never be an accurate estimate of the vastness of the Indian experience. Rushdie as a privileged post-colonial cultural relativist viewed Indian multicultural ethnicity from the top (a colonial male gaze). With the help of the compare and contrast research technique, this paper will try to comprehend the limitations of the diasporic cognitive cultural mapping of Midnight’s Children as opposed to the strengths of a cartographic landscape assessed through discourse analysis. The comprehension of the “Oriental Crisis” in the domain of literature and cultural studies could enable a gauging of the research g...
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021
Indian literature has always been governed by classical norms. Literature has been divided into ‘... more Indian literature has always been governed by classical norms. Literature has been divided into ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture’. The non-Dalit writing revolves around ‘rasa’ and the motive is ‘art for art’s sake’. Dalit aestheticism is ‘art for life’s sake’. When certain forms and styles are applied imitating Sanskrit poetics, Shakespearean language or Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, literature is considered to be following beauty parameters that are considered to be necessary for artistic pleasure. This kind of claim of holding traditional Indian aesthetics as a law book for all kinds of literature cannot be validated. The assertion of mainstream aesthetics as aesthetics for pan India is bound to exclude the truth of disregarded subjects. There is a need for Dalit literature to follow alternative aesthetics as the writings are the real story of pain and survival. How can pain be read for the purpose of pleasure? In the case of Dalit literature, the artistic yardsticks are not destroyed rat...
The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin&... more The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin's (2000) What the Body Remembers in the context of feminist narratology. Feminist narratology posits that gender must and does impact the course of a narrative and, in a sense, accounts for the difference and specificity of women's writing. Narrativization is one of the commonest ways of applying an order and perspective to experience. When the pen is in women's hands, the story is bound to color differently, to order time and space differently. If narratology is the science of narrative, feminist narratology acknowledges the difference between a man's writing and a woman's writing and focuses on the effect of gender at the level of discourse. A feminist narratological analysis of Baldwin's novel would attempt to show how the narrative technique used by her helps her to tell her story differently.Baldwin's What the Body Remembers tells a personal story, and si...
The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin&... more The purpose of this research paper is to examine the narrative structure and strategy of Baldwin's (2000) What the Body Remembers in the context of feminist narratology. Feminist narratology posits that gender must and does impact the course of a narrative and, in a sense, accounts for the difference and specificity of women's writing. Narrativization is one of the commonest ways of applying an order and perspective to experience. When the pen is in women's hands, the story is bound to color differently, to order time and space differently. If narratology is the science of narrative, feminist narratology acknowledges the difference between a man's writing and a woman's writing and focuses on the effect of gender at the level of discourse. A feminist narratological analysis of Baldwin's novel would attempt to show how the narrative technique used by her helps her to tell her story differently.Baldwin's What the Body Remembers tells a personal story, and si...
The main object of my paper is to co-relate the decoded signified idea of Henry Louis Gates Jr. a... more The main object of my paper is to co-relate the decoded signified idea of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Mestiza Consciousness of Gloria Andalzua with the referential detail from the text Beloved by Toni Morrison. The co-relating factor of both these theories is based on cause and effect issues. The decoded signified ideas of African-American history, myth, folklore, cultural values and moral codes have impacted a lot to shape an inclusive conscious idea which is close enough to the concept of “Third World Consciousness”. European history and theories alone are inadequate to express the true sense of African American culture, literature and its moral values. Toni Morrison’s basic concern “is to move beyond the systematic or structural patterns” of those theories and history ( Rigney 7). The African American ethnic community has always suffered from an identity crisis caused by the past slave tradition, racism, sexism, dehumanized moral and cultural values. In Beloved, Morrison depicted a...
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