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Multicultural literature essay
Multicultural literature essay
An essay about multicultural literature
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The concept of orientalism refers to the western perceptions of the eastern cultures and social practices. It is a specific expose of the eurocentric universalism which takes for granted both, the superiority of what is European or western and the inferiority of what is not. Salman Rushdie's Booker of the Bookers prize winning novel Midnights Children is full of remarks and incidents that show the orientalist perception of India and its people. It is Rushdie's interpretation of a period of about 70 years in India's modern history dealing with the events leading to the partition and beyond. Rushdie is a fantasist and a creator of alternate realities, the poet and prophet of a generation born at the degree zero of national history. The present …show more content…
Instead of the beauty of the tiny valley circled by giant teeth, he noticed the narrowness, the proximity of the horizon; and felt sad, to be at home and feel so utterly enclosed. He also felt in - inexplicably - as though the old place resented his educated stethoscope return. Beneath the winner ice, it had been coldly neutral, but now there was no doubt; the years in Germany had returned him to a hostile environment. Many years later, when the hole inside him had been clogged up with hate, and he came to sacrifice himself at the shrine of the black stone god in the temple on the hill, he would try and recall his childhood springs in Paradise, the way it was before travel and tussocks and army tanks messed everything …show more content…
Salman Rushdie has used these generalized perceptions of India without examining their reasonability. He sometimes presents India and its people as a collective noun and ascribes general qualities and characteristics to them, without considering their individual merits and demerits. As he writes in the novel: "I permit myself this one generalization; Americans have mastered the universe, but have no domination over their mouths; whereas India is impotent , but her children tend to have excellent teeth” (181). He writes at a different place: "We are a nation of forgetters” (37). At another place, he writes: "We are not like Indians, always making battles (33). It is evident by these remarks that Salman Rushdie was influenced by the generalizing concept of orientalism. His descriptions of India as an impotent, battle - making nation of forgetters is not based on any real observation but is based on the orientalist perceptions of India in the western world. These observations have no reality at all and these are used only to attract western
The Western ideology of the Eastern exoticism and docility originates from the long historical context of imperialism and political tensions between the West and the East. Domestic struggles caused by political strife and war in the East, such as the Philippines during the American-Spanish War and China during the Opium Wars, created an opportunity for the West to infiltrate the destabilized Eastern countries. This access allowed the West to exercise a form of supremacy over Asia, as the East was seen as powerless and incapable of self-governance. Thus, considering themselves as racially and politically superior, the West adopted a “White Man’s Burden” mentality described as the duty of the masculine Western men to dominate the East and civilize the “uneducated” and “feminine” Orientals. This racial supremacy mentality characterized the Eastern natives as feminine and the Western imperialists as masculine because the Eastern natives were obedient and docile to those of the West. This historical framework would eventually co...
Orientalism is never far from what Denys Hay ahs called the idea of Europe, a collective notion identifying ‘us’ Europeans as against all ‘those’ non-Europeans, and indeed it precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as superior one in comparison with ass the non-European peoples and cultures (7).
According to Said (1978) the entire concept of ‘orientalism’ is compromised, in the eyes of most Arabic and Asian peoples because it appears to them to be filled with archaic prejudices against Eastern cultures. Moreover, the word ‘orientalism’ is also used to refer to the definitions of Middle Eastern cultures by scholars who hold more pro-Eastern attitudes. Another common complaint is that Western historians and scholars’ definitions of orientalism do not seek to make distinctions between the different tribes and cultures that make up the Middle East (Varisco 2013). Their definition of ‘orientalism’ is based on similar constructs to those in the West where, even though different nations may have different ethnic groups, they all embrace a progressive culture based on Judeo-Christian co...
In his book Orientalism, Dr. Edward Said wrote about the influence of material culture – journalism, literature, art – on how people perceive the “Other”. Specifically, he focused on the way that people from the “West” view the “Orient.” He wrote, “The phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals… with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient… despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a real “Orient” (Said 71). Dr. Said wrote about how Orientalism, through material culture, encouraged, legitimized and even enabled the British domination of great portions of the East by emphasizing, exaggerating and distorting differences between Arab peoples and the cultures of the North America and Europe (Said 69). Orientalism often portrays Arab culture as mysterious, exotic, backward, uncivilized, or dangerous, creating stereotypes that have been reinforced throughout recorded history.
Rushdie, Salman. `Outside the Whale' Imaginary Homelands: Essays and criticisms 1981-1991 Penguin Books Ltd. (1992)
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first evidence of usage the word Orientalism is in 1769 (Merriam Webster). In general Orientalism is an imitation or depiction of the eastern culture made by the western people. One simple example is Fortune cookies, it is made by the western people but it imitates the eccentricity of Asian desert.
When discussing the controversial authors of Indian literature, one name should come to mind before any other. Salman Rushdie, who is best known for writing the book “Midnights Children.” The first two chapters of “Midnights Children” are known as “The Perforated Sheet”. In “The Perforated Sheet” Rushdie utilizes magic realism as a literary device to link significant events and their effects on the lives of Saleem’s family to a changing India. In fact, it is in the beginning of the story that the reader is first exposed to Rushdie’s use of magic realism when being introduced to Saleem. “On the stroke of midnight/clocks joined palms” and “the instant of India’s arrival at independence. I tumbled forth into the world”(1711). Rushdie’s description of the clocks “joining palms” and explanation of India’s newfound independence is meant to make the reader understand the significance of Saleem’s birth. The supernatural action of the clocks joining palms is meant to instill wonder, while independence accentuates the significance of the beginning of a new era. Rushdie also utilizes magic realism as an unnatural narrative several times within the story to show the cultural significance of events that take place in the story in an abnormal way.
According to Said, one definition of Orientalism is that it is a "style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and the 'Occident'." This is connected to the idea that Western society, or Europe in this case, is superior in comparison to cultures that are non-European, or the Orient. This means that Orientalism is a kind of racism held toward anyone not European. Said wrote that Orientalism was "a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient." This Western idea of the Orient explains why so many European countries occupied lands they believed to be Oriental.
Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children employs strategies which engage in an exploration of History, Nationalism and Hybridity. This essay will examine three passages from the novel which demonstrate these issues. Furthermore, it will explore why each passage is a good demonstration of these issues, how these issues apply to India in the novel, and how the novel critiques these concepts.
Gradually, despite their many internal differences, the countries of Western Europe began to conceive of themselves as a single civilization, known as the West (Hall and Gieben 1992:289). The challenge from Islam was an important factor in shaping Europe and developing the idea of the West. Europe’s cultural identity was originally characterized by religion and civilisation, eventually, Europe developed a sharper geographical, political and economic definition; closer to the modern secular concept of the West (Hall and Gieb...
Rushdie uses magical realism as a post-colonial device to emphasize the relationship between the time following the establishment of independence in India and Saleem Sinai’s fantastical tie to it. This self-alluding narrative references indigenous Indian culture, particularly the story of the Arabian Nights. Magical rea...
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, published in 1980, was perhaps the seminal text in conceiving opinions as to interplay of post-modern and post-colonial theory. The title of the novel refers to the birth of Saleem Sinai, the novel’s principal narrator, who is born at midnight August 15th 1947, the precise date of Indian independence. From this remarkable coincidence we are immediately drawn to the conclusion that the novel’s concerns are of the new India, and how someone born into this new state of the ‘Midnight’s child’, if you will, interacts with this post-colonial state. To characterise the novel as one merely concerned with post-colonial India, and its various machinations, is however a reductive practice. While the novel does at various times deal with what it is to be Indian, both pre and post 1947, it is a much more layered and interesting piece of work. Midnight’s Children’s popularity is such that it was to be voted 25th in a poll conducted by the Guardian, listing the 100 best books of the last century, and was also to receive the Booker Prize in 1981 and the coveted ‘Booker of Bookers’ in 1993. http://www.bookerprize.co.uk/
...es based on their desires instead of the desires of their male counterparts. As the women age, they take on new names to represent their physical and emotional changes. Naseem gains power as a married woman and becomes Reverend Mother while Mumtaz acquires power through the realization of her reproductive abilities. These women have varying degrees of power over their lives but it is limited to the value Indian society places on the domestic sphere and the importance of a woman’s place in this sphere. A married woman will garner more respect and have more of a voice than an unwed daughter living within her father’s household, while motherhood is regarded as one of the most important roles for a woman and given special considerations. Rushdie portrays ascension to power within the realm of the home and family by to show how power is passed between social boundaries.
Aravind Adiga in his debut novel The White Tiger, which won the Britain’s esteemed Booker Prize in 2008, highlights the suffering of a subaltern protagonist in the twenty first century known as materialism era. Through his subaltern protagonist Balram Halwai, he highlights the suffering of lower class people. This novel creates two different India in one “an India of Light and an India of Darkness” (Adiga, p. 14). The first one represents the prosperous India where everyone is able to dream a healthy and comfortable life. The life of this “Shining India” reflects through giant shopping malls, flyovers, fast and furious life style, neon lights, modern vehicles and a lot of opportunities which creates hallucination that India is competing with western countries and not far behind from them. But, on the other side, the life nurtures with poverty, scarcity of foods, life taking diseases, inferiority, unemployment, exploitation and humiliation, homelessness and environmental degradation in India of darkness.
Orientalism is a tradition of Western representations of the Orient, created in the context of Western political dominance over the Orient, which understand and master the inferior.