Subaltern Historiography: Girish Karnad’s The Dreams of Tipu Sultan by Abha Shukla Kaushik DOC

Title	Subaltern Historiography: Girish Karnad’s The Dreams of Tipu Sultan by Abha Shukla Kaushik
Author	D. Shukla Kaushik
Pages	5
File Size	46.5 KB
File Type	DOC
Total Downloads	336
Total Views	438

Summary

Subaltern Historiography: Girish Karnad’s The Dreams of Tipu Sultan by Abha Shukla Kaushik Published in Indian Drama in English: Some Perspectives, Editor Dr. Abha Shukla Kaushik, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2013. The term Postcolonial does not lend itself to any fixed definitio...

Description

Subaltern Historiography: Girish Karnad's The Dreams of Tipu Sultan by Abha Shukla Kaushik Published in Indian Drama in English: Some Perspectives, Editor Dr. Abha Shukla Kaushik, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2013. The term Postcolonial does not lend itself to any fixed definition. Postcolonial discourse, sharing the mood of postmodernism and questioning the continuation of hierarchies, does not merely suggest a reversal of the many binaries that exist in the contemporary world. Postcolonialism is basically a shift in perspective. It is difficult to isolate postcolonial literary theories as something that is purely literary in nature. The interdisciplinary nature of the theory forbids their purely literary use. The fact that the term lends itself to more than one interpretation allows its use in different contexts. It is an interdisciplinary field that sometimes encroaches upon what can be identified as cultural studies, feminist studies, dalit movement etc. Postcolonial investigation actually connects the literary with the sociological, the historical, the cultural, the political and the economic. One of the early attempts to theorise postcoloniality is made by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin in their book 'The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practices in Postcolonial Literatures'. Later Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak emerged as the main voices. The word postcolonial can be understood by drawing on both- the Commonwealth including the erstwhile colonies, and the more complex use of the word post as something which involves the past as well as the present. In the context of postmodernism and poststructuralism it is difficult to accept any post something as that which comes after something. Beginning of the post-independence phase in a country need not mean the beginning of postcolonial period. The many discussions regarding the term postcolonial make it clear to us that in the field of literary theories, this term is very rarely being used to denote something that comes after colonialism. With the dropping of the hyphen, the term postcolonialism is effectively being used as an always present tendency in any literature of subjugation marked by a systematic process of cultural domination through the imposition of power. The unhyphenated postcolonialism goes beyond the point of independence in the colonies which makes it possible to recognise differences. Two important trends that can be discerned are that it defies the linearity of history and accepts the notion of opposition as well as complicity among the colonised. Postcolonial discourse offers certain theoretical models which can be used in the discussion of literary texts which come either from the colonial period written by the colonised or the coloniser or from the postcolonial contemporary world. Different texts therefore, can be read differently by using the perspectives of writers from the former colonies. Postcolonial literary criticism has primarily suggested a way of reading differently the colonial texts by reading differently and hence challenging any accepted mode of reading is an important feature of postcolonial criticism. Postcolonial critics challenge the identities imposed by the western discourse on the third world. Gayatri Spivak writes about the continued subalternisation of the so called third world literatures. Third world literature deals with the nation, with colonialism; with the trauma the colonial era has created in order to receive recognition in the international scene. In these literatures the desire to show one's own culture as a very distinctive culture overshadows the concern for raising questions regarding the impact of colonialism on these cultures. Discussion of literatures from India...