Diasporic Literature - Page 2

The Global Precariat: Refugees and COVID-19

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Srinita Bhattacharjee

University of Hyderabad. ORCID: 0000-0003-4773-7045. Email: srinitabhattacharjee@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s30n7

 Abstract

Are refugees welcomed by nation-states? Receiving a hospitable environment to resow the seeds of survival is a fundamental right of any human individual especially for refugees who have been rendered stateless and rightless. They require magnanimous hospitality in the form of social solidarity but what they acquire are disdainful attacks from neoliberal nation-states.  Often their traumatic voyages towards a secured mode of living meet with dejection and despair when nation-states violate their obligations by refusing to grant them asylum.  The few, who are accepted, are also compelled to hover around nation-state peripheries with ruthless indifference awaiting them. I shall critically consider Derridean ‘hostipitality’ as the premise to problematize refugee identity as the locus of precarity ensued by radical alterities.

 Keywords: refugee, COVID, precarity, hostipitality, neoliberalism

You are Cancelled: Virtual Collective Consciousness and the Emergence of Cancel Culture as Ideological Purging

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Joseph Ching Velasco

De La Salle University. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7098-8216. Email: josephchingvelasco@gmail.com

   Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s21n2

Abstract

Social networking platforms were originally conceived to enable individuals to engage in various forms of online interactions. As social networking sites robustly permeated different facets of society, they have been commonly grouped under the more generic term “social media.” Social media has become a powerful force in contemporary life, paving the way for the rise of digital participatory cultures and social movements. More recently, the culture of cancellation has entered the vernacular of digital culture, primarily targeted at public figures who break the loose norms of social acceptability. Specifically, cancel culture is a form of public shaming initiated on social media to deprive someone of their usual clout or attention with the aim of making public discourse more diffused and less monopolized by those in positions of privilege. Conversely, cancel culture has also been framed as a form of intolerance against opposing views. In this essay, I unpack the nuances and implications of cancel culture through Neil Alperstein’s concept of “virtual collective consciousness.” In Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, cancel culture has become more demonstrable on social media. I will use a case study of a public figure from the Philippines who has been subjected to cancel culture in order to examine the complexity of this social phenomenon.

Keywords: Cancel Culture, Social Media, Public Shaming, Cancelledt, Celebrity, woke, wokeism, influencer

Performing Refugee’s Body and Memory: Poetics of Diaspora in lê thi diem thúy’s Autoperformance

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Io Chun KONG

Assistant Professor, City University of Macau, E-mail: erickong@cityu.mo/ erickonghome@yahoo.com

   Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s21n1

Abstract

Despite the fact that substantial scholarship in Asian diasporic and refugee narratives has been developed in the post-Cold War era, critical refugee studies related to autoperformance have yet to be examined. Within this context of addressing autoperformance as an aesthetic genre, this paper explores the poetics of Vietnamese refugeehood as mediated in lê thi diem thúy’s ?Red Fiery Summer (1995) and the bodies between us (1996). While the former historicizes the Vietnam War from the diasporic perspective of a refugee, the latter articulates the counter master narratives by performing bodily memories of refugeehood. Informed by Marianne Hirsch’s “post-memory”, the paper demonstrates how body and memory could be inextricably and interdependently rendered as a poetics of diaspora in performance. This paper further argues that autoperforming these two aspects is critical to revisiting the history of the Vietnam War and calling the militarism of the U.S.A. into question.

Keywords: lê thi diem thúy, refugee, postmemory, poetics of diaspora, autoperformance

Of fear and fantasy, fact and fiction: Interrogating canonical Indian literary historiography towards comprehending partition of Bengal in post-Independence Indian (English) fictional space

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Ashes Gupta

Professor, Dept. of English, Tripura University (A Central University), Suryamaninagar, Agartala, West Tripura. ORCID: 0000-0002-5881-8468. Email: ashesgupta@tripurauniv.in

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.13

 Abstract

A victim of the partition of Eastern India/undivided Bengal, a refugee is one who has ironically left behind the real but has carried on forever indelibly imprinted in memory that which is lost and remembered in superlatives, thus moving and simultaneously resisting to move. Remaining mentally anchored forever on ‘Bengal’s shore’ and having been denied the moment of adequate articulation of the loss in factual terms partly due to immediate trauma and partly due to the inherent politics of the language of standard literary expression vis-à-vis spoken language (Bangla vs Bangal respectively) with its hierarchic positionings, as well as the politics of state policy that attributed partition of Western India primordial signification, the Bengali Hindu refugee migrating from erstwhile East Pakistan (and now Bangladesh) to India, has never ‘really’ spoken and this is the hypothesis of this argument. Thus, what is heard, being far removed from the historical moment of rupture that was partition and with the loss of that fateful generation is bound to be ‘fiction’ and not ‘fact’. This paper proposes that since the refugee voice was denied adequate articulation of the ‘facts’ and the ‘fears’ resultant from partition in this part of Eastern India, that historical moment of perception and documentation has been irretrievably lost. Hence any attempt at documenting the same now shall obviously result in fictionalization of and fantasizing the loss as is evident in original and translational post-Independence Indian English Fiction -the moment of loss being the moment of fictional genesis. This paper also puts forward the necessity of identifying two specific periods beyond ‘independence’ whose axiomatic point would be the partition of Eastern India/ undivided Bengal viz. pre-partition and post-partition Indian Literature. The same shall apply to Indian English Literature both in original and translation.

Keywords: fear, fantasy, fact, fiction, partition, canonical historiography, refugee, independence, Indian English fictional space, inter-semiotic, translation.

Travelling another Country: An Exploration into Travel Writings by Bhojpuri Speakers of India

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Jullie Rani

Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067. Email: jullie.jnu@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.03

Abstract

Travel writings by Bhojpuri speakers of India define stories of pain and separation, survival of lives in difficult situations and the aspect of being together as a group.  In the nineteenth century, Bhojpuri speakers from India were sent to countries such as Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad, Surinam, and Guyana to work at sugar plantations under a five year agreement during the British rule. These Bhojpuri plantation workers were called girmitiya. In this context, this paper seeks to address issues of Bhojpuri diaspora, defining newer discussions towards political, social and economic and cultural spheres of their lives in another country, through an analysis of travel literature written by them.  Ample travel literature has been written by Bhojpuri speakers who went and settled in the respective countries to which they were sent, also called Bhojpuri diaspora. The aspect which makes this work different is that this paper specifically analyzes works of travel to another country written by Indian Bhojpuri speakers and not literature written by Bhojpuri diaspora.  The literary works analyzed here are written originally in Hindi and Bhojpuri namely– Fiji mein Kabir Panth ka Udbhav aur Vikas (Development of Kabir’s stories in Fiji) by Dr Kamta Kamlesh, Pravasi Bhojpuri ka Antardwand (Dilemma of the Bhojpuri diaspora) by Rasik Bihari Ojha, Pravasi Bhartiya kaha aur kitne (Number and location of the Indian diaspora) by Dr Prakash Chandra Jain and Bhojpuri kshetra ki jatiya pehchaan (Caste identity of Bhojpuri region) by Dr Shri Vilas Tiwary.

Keywords: Travel Literature, Pre-Independent Period, Indian Diaspora, Bhojpuri Speakers.

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