{"id":1388,"date":"2024-10-01T23:11:15","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T03:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=1388"},"modified":"2024-11-04T11:59:06","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T16:59:06","slug":"microcosmic-representations-of-partition-a-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2024\/10\/01\/microcosmic-representations-of-partition-a-reading-list\/","title":{"rendered":"An Updated Reading List: Microcosmic Representations of Partition"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Secondary and Theoretical Works<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><em>Colonialism\/Postcolonialism, <\/em>Ania Loomba (2015)<\/li>\r\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>More specifically: \u201cDefining The Terms: Colonialism, Imperialism, Neo-Colonialism, Postcolonialism,\u201d \u201cColonialism and Literature,\u201d \u201cGender, Sexuality, and Colonial Discourse\u201d<\/li>\r\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Also from Loomba: <em>South Asian Feminisms <\/em><\/span><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<li><em>Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea,<\/em> edited by Rosalind C. Morris (2010)\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>More specifically: <em>\u201cCan the Subaltern Speak?\u201d <\/em>by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<li><em>Barbed Wire: Borders and Partitions in South Asia<\/em>, Jayita Sengupta (2012)\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>Request if the library can buy a copy<\/li>\r\n<li>More specifically: \u201cIntroduction,\u201d \u201cLiving the Dream: Narrating a Landscape Lost and a Land Left Behind,\u201d \u201cThe Emblematic Body: Women and Nationalism in Partition Narratives\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<li><em>Unsettling Partition: Literature, Gender, Memory, <\/em>Jill Didur (2006)\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>More specifically: \u201cFragments of Imagination: Rethinking the Literary in Historiography through Narratives of India\u2019s Partition,\u201d \u201cCracking the Nation: Memory, Minorities, and the Ends of Narrative in Bapsi Sidhwa\u2019s Cracking India,\u201d \u201cAt a Loss for Words: Reading the Silence in South Asian Women\u2019s Partition Narratives\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<li><em>Borders and Boundaries: How Women Experienced the Partition of India, <\/em>Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin (1998)<\/li>\r\n<li><em>\u201c<\/em>The Translator\u2019s Task,\u201d Walter Benjamin (1923, translated 1997)<\/li>\r\n<li><em><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, <\/span><\/em><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari <\/span><\/li>\r\n<li><em><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature<\/span><\/em><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">, Rebecca L. Walkowitz<\/span><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Academic Journals<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>Verge: Studies in Global Asias<\/li>\r\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Journal of Postcolonial Studies <\/span><\/li>\r\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Literature in History <\/span><\/li>\r\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Genre (for content on approaching historical fiction)<\/span><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Key Terms<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>Postcoloniality<\/li>\r\n<li>World Literature<\/li>\r\n<li>Partition<\/li>\r\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Subaltern<\/span><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Primary Texts<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li><em>Pinjar (The Skeleton), <\/em>Amrita Pritam (1950, translated 2009)<\/li>\r\n<li><em>Ice-Candy Man <\/em>(also titled <em>Cracking India<\/em>), Bapsi Sidhwa (1988)<\/li>\r\n<li><em>The Other Side of Silence, <\/em>Urvashi Butalia (1998)<\/li>\r\n<li><em><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There, <\/span><\/em><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Krishna Sobti <\/span><\/li>\r\n<li><em><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Tomb of Sand, <\/span><\/em><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Gitanjali Shree<\/span><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p><br \/>In conversation with Professor Kersh, Professor Sider Jost, Professor Seiler, Professor Haque, and Zana Mody (one of my tutors from studying abroad), I have created a broad reading list; it includes some new titles and some works to revisit more specifically under the lens of this project.<\/p>\r\n<p>In terms of theory and secondary works, I am motivated by what it means to even access these primary texts; this involves consciously thinking about this genre as historical fiction. What does it mean for these women-authored novels to function as works of historical fiction that answer a lack of actual women\u2019s voices in the real-life historical archives of Partition? What does it mean for these works to either be published or translated to English relatively recently, regardless of when they were written? In short, not only am I searching for secondary texts that define postcoloniality and the oral history project of the Partition archives, but I\u2019m also looking for theory that can help answer precisely why it\u2019s so difficult to locate these texts in an English-speaking sphere (both for purchase and for academia). For context, my hunt for physical copies of these primary texts was a quest triangulated across the United States, the United Kingdom, and India\u2014what does it mean to \u201cdiscover\u201d (for lack of a better word) female-authored novels on the female experience of Partition?<\/p>\r\n<p>On the level of content, I am captivated by a larger trend of microcosmic representations (be it clothing, language, even names) of macrocosmic violence (here, the struggle between India and Pakistan) within domestic spaces and women\u2019s lives. What does this pattern mean? Why are there smaller representations of communal conflict in women\u2019s day-to-day lives against the backdrop of postcolonial state formation (especially considering that women themselves are often read as an extension of the state, like in the case of Bharat Mata)? I want to move away from the traditional reading of physical women\u2019s bodies in Partition literature and move towards a study of their inner lives. So many narratives chart the effects of dismemberment, rape, and abduction on the physical female body, but what happens to women mentally?<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Update:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">My main goal with my updated reading list was to whittle down the mass of texts I previously listed into something more manageable. This involved shifting certain titles into different sections and breaking down larger readings into specific chapters that are most helpful to this project. My secondary and theoretical works have not shifted drastically, though I\u2019ve broken most of them down in more bite-sized pieces; personally, this more in-depth listing makes the project feel more approachable. I\u2019ve cut <em>Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature<\/em> byGilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari and <em>Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature <\/em>by Rebecca L. Walkowitz for now, though certain ideas from these texts might become more relevant if I shift more of my focus to translation; for now, Benjamin\u2019s \u201cThe Translator\u2019s Task\u201d seems to be a suitable enough look into the politics of translation. At the stage of research I\u2019m currently in, it\u2019s been fruitful to focus my energies on theoretical texts that explicitly focus on the juncture of literature and Partition.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">In terms of academic journals, I surveyed <em>The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies <\/em>for useful articles related to Partition and narrowed the results down to two articles: \u201cThe invisible holocaust and the journey as an exodus: the poisoned village and the stranger city\u201d by Ashis Nandy and \u201cPartition\u2019s other avatars\u201d by Roy Parama. The latter article proposed a new book (<em>Violent Belongings <\/em>by Kavita Daiya) potentially worth looking at in the context of Partition literature and the state of the physical landscape, though I\u2019m not sure I want to tackle chapters from this book until I\u2019ve read my selections from the Didur and the Sengupta. I greatly narrowed down the list of journals I had after doing a preliminary search into what each publication had on Partition specifically. I still need to peruse <em>Verge: Studies in Global Asias<\/em>, but the refinement of my keywords is helping this process. I included \u201cPartition\u201d as an updated key term.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">When it comes to my primary texts, I realized that I would never be able to do justice to a book so large in scope as Gitanjali Shree\u2019s <em>Tomb of Sand<\/em>, so I struck the 1000-page tome from my reading list. Given just how vast of a narrative the novel is, it feels as though including it in my thesis would be too broad for the scope and space limitations of the project. I also tentatively cut Krishna Sobti\u2019s <em>A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There <\/em>from my original reading list. I\u2019ve read the novel once before, and it didn\u2019t necessarily speak to me in the same way as <em>Pinjar <\/em>or <em>Ice-Candy Man<\/em>. If it seems relevant as I continue my research, I can always revisit the text. I moved <em>The Other Side of Silence <\/em>(1998) by Urvashi Butalia from Secondary Works to Primary Texts for now since the bulk of my historical background comes from this nonfiction feminist oral history. I\u2019m almost solidly set on <em>Pinjar <\/em>(1950) and <em>Ice-Candy Man <\/em>(1988) as the focus texts for my thesis. The temporal gap between the two also provides a place for analysis in the larger context of Partition literature as answering a gap in the historical archives. Both texts are authored by female writers who directly experienced Partition violence. <em>Pinjar <\/em>was originally published in Punjabi and then translated into English in 2009; the novel tracks the kidnapping and forced marriage of Puro, a young Hindu girl, to a Muslim man shortly before Partition. <em>Ice-Candy Man <\/em>centers on Lenny, a young Parsi girl living with polio in Lahore, as she witnesses brutal violence enacted on those around her.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Secondary and Theoretical Works Colonialism\/Postcolonialism, Ania Loomba (2015) More specifically: \u201cDefining The Terms: Colonialism, Imperialism, Neo-Colonialism, Postcolonialism,\u201d \u201cColonialism and Literature,\u201d \u201cGender, Sexuality, and Colonial Discourse\u201d Also from Loomba: South Asian Feminisms Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea, edited by Rosalind C. Morris (2010) More specifically: \u201cCan the Subaltern Speak?\u201d by &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2024\/10\/01\/microcosmic-representations-of-partition-a-reading-list\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">An Updated Reading List: Microcosmic Representations of Partition<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}