Sunday Reading: Sultana's Reality

 Sultana's Reality VS. Sultana's Dream

This blog is in response to Yesha Ma'am's Sunday reading assignment. In this blog, I'll discuss my experience reading digitally born literature and distinguish between Sultana's Reality and Sultana's Dream.

"Sultana's Reality" is a multimedia interactive story by Afrah Shafiq. This is based on the 1905 science fiction "Sultana's Dream" by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein. 

"Sultana's Reality" is a kind of retelling of "Sultana's Dream", but in a whole different way. In other words, this is a reaction or reply to the original work, "Sultana's Dream". Just like the title suggests "Sultana's Dream" is set in 'Ladyland' which is a utopian world for women because there are no men or men are not allowed in 'Ladyland'. In this story basically, Sultana is dreaming of such a place that does not exist in the real world. In reply to that Sultana's Reality Shows that they only can dream of this kind of place.

1. Concept of Andarmehel – the universe of Women

The Andarmahal was a space that women could not step out of, but it was also a space that men would not step into. An all-women space, free from surveillance, for women across class to do, say and behave as they pleased.

The Andarmehel is also known as the Ladyland in the short story. This Ladyland is a utopian world, made for women only, no men are aware of its existence. The concept of Ladylandy seems very easy and straightforward on the surface but it is not that easy. We can say that it is not easy because we have "Sultana's Reality" to support our argument. 

2. Observation of females and their connection with books.
(Colonial education movement)

In the colonial era, education for girls and women was seen as largely unnecessary. The prevailing view was that women's place was in the home and that their primary role was to raise children and manage the household. This view began to change in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as a growing number of people began to believe that women should be educated in order to be better wives and mothers. This movement led to the establishment of a number of schools and colleges for women, as well as to an increase in the number of women who were able to access education.

While the colonial education movement did open up new opportunities for women, it also had some drawbacks. One of the most significant was that it often reinforced traditional ideas about women's place in society. For example, many of the schools and colleges that were established for women were designed to teach them subjects that were seen as appropriate for women, such as domestic science and homemaking. This helped to further the idea that women's primary role was in the home, and that their education should be focused on preparing them for this role.

Books have had an interesting role in women's lives. During the 18th century, we see the rise of the novel, yet the female characters are not the focal point of the work. They are the objects that are talked about. Female characters were not interacting with the world around them. They were used to show how their environment impacted the male characters. The relationship between women and books is a lot more complex. Women's relation to books has been influenced by the lack of education, the limited access to reading material, and the strong connection of books with church and religion. 

The primary distinction between these two narratives is that one is a short story and the other is available in digital format. It recounts a tale through a collection of short movies and artwork pieces. Sultana's Dream is written in the style of a conventional utopia, but Sultana's Reality is a startling counter narrative to Sultana's Dream. A girl is reading at the beginning of the first video of Sultana's Reality. She afterwards notices figures levitate outside her window. It's almost as though she's begun to transform herself into the fictional characters. The dream inevitably comes to an end, or should we say breaks. Similarly, her dream is coming to an end, and she is returning to reality.

Future of Postcolonial Studies

Future of Postcolonialism: Thinking Activity

This blog is a response to the thinking activity assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog,, I will discuss my point of view on two articles from Aania Loomba's Colonialism/Postcolonialism (2nd and 3rd edition).

What is Postcolonialism:

Postcolonialism is a field of study that emerged in the wake of decolonization or the process by which colonies gain independence from their colonizers. It is an interdisciplinary field that examines the effects of colonization on both the colonized and the colonizer. Postcolonialism also looks at the ways in which the colonized people resist and subvert the colonial system.

There is no one definition of postcolonialism, but the field is generally concerned with the power dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized, and the impact of colonization on both groups. Postcolonialism is often critical of the Eurocentric perspective that dominated much of academia prior to the field's emergence.

Postcolonialism is a relatively new field, and as such, it is still evolving and changing. It is an important field of study that has the potential to change the way we think about the world and our place in it.

"Postcolonialism... involves a studied engagement with the experience of colonialism and its past and present effects"

According to the glossary of literary terms by M.H. Abrams,

The critical analysis of the history, culture, literature, and modes of discourse that are specific to the former colonies of England, Spain, France, and other European imperial powers. These studies have focused especially on the Third World countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean islands, and South America. Some scholars, however, extend the scope of such analyses also to the discourse and cultural productions of countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which achieved independence much earlier than the Third World countries. Postcolonial studies sometimes also encompass aspects of British literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, viewed through a perspective that reveals the ways in which the social and economic life represented in that literature was tacitly underwritten by colonial exploitation.

Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country. It addresses the role of literature in perpetuating and challenging what postcolonial critic Edward Said refers to as cultural imperialism. Not all migration takes place in a colonial setting, and not all postcolonial literature deals with migration. (Postcolonial Literature)

Postcolonial Criticism:

According to Peter Barry, there are three phases Adopt, Adapt, and Adept gives a lens through which to view postcolonial literature.

In its earliest phase, which is to say before it was known as such, postcolonial criticism took as its main subject matter white representations of colonial countries and criticised these for their limitations and their bias: thus, critics would discuss the representation of Africa in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness or of India in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, or of Algeria in Albert Camus's The Outsider.

The second phase of postcolonial criticism involved a turn toward explorations of themselves and their society by postcolonial writers. At this stage the celebration and exploration of diversity, hybridity, and difference become central. This corresponds to the 'gynotext' phase of feminist criticism (Gynocriticism) when there is a turn towards the exploration of female experience and identities in books by women.

Third PhaseThe analogy between these two types of criticism might be pushed a little further so that a parallel might also be perceived with the split in feminist criticism between 'theoretical' and 'empirical' versions, as suggested above.

Thus, in postcolonial criticism we might see a split between variants very directly influenced by deconstruction and post-structuralism - such as the work of Homi Bhabha - and work like Said's which accepts a good deal from liberal humanism, is written in a more accessible way, and seems perhaps to lend itself more directly to political engagement.

Postcolonial criticism emphasises cultural differences in literary works and is one of the numerous critical methods we have explored that focus on specific problems such as gender (feminist criticism), class (Marxist critique), and sexual orientation (lesbian/gay criticism). This opens the idea of a'super-reader,' who can respond to a text in all of these ways equally and appropriately. In practice, one of these factors tends to trump the others for most readers. For example, the feminist critique example from Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic does not remark on features in Wuthering Heights that would attract postcolonial critics, such as Heathcliff being identified by Emily Bronte as a racial 'Other.' (Barry)

Future of Postcolonialism:

The future of postcolonialism is shrouded in uncertainty. On the one hand, it could be argued that the rise of globalisation and the increased flow of people, ideas and culture across borders will lead to the further erosion of traditional boundaries and the further hybridisation of cultures. This could lead to a situation where the concept of postcolonialism becomes increasingly irrelevant. On the other hand, it could be argued that the increased awareness of and interest in the histories and experiences of colonised peoples will lead to a resurgence of postcolonialism as a critical framework for understanding the world. Only time will tell which of these two trajectories will come to dominate.

Future of Postcolonial studies (3rd Edition):

Some of the most well-known postcolonial scholars, such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, claim to 'no longer have a postcolonial worldview.' Some postcolonialists, both inside and outside of literary studies, have rethought their positions in response to new problems, such as those provided by environmental studies. Dipesh Chakrabarty believes that his "readings in globalisation theories, Marxist capital analysis, subaltern studies, and postcolonial critique" have not qualified him to analyse the "planetary problem of climate change". According to Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martnez-Alier (1997), this gap is visible in American environmentalism and its fascination with the wilderness. Postcolonial criticism has been sceptical of earth-first 'green critique,' and hence has avoided dealing with issues concerning the environment.

According to Jodi A. Byrd and Michael Rothberg, this is prior to postcolonial studies' over-reliance on colonial models from South Asia and Africa that do not speak to settler colonies from the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Rothberg and Byrd: Postcolonial Studies in the United States is a reified, distanced, and monolithic 'Third World literature' that largely ignores the individual and collective histories of several important allied traditions, including American studies, Native American studies, African American studies, Latino studies, and Gay and Lesbian studies. While there are significant political commonalities amongst disenfranchised peoples and organisations throughout the world (some of which I will discuss momentarily), there are also significant differences between them. Native Americans and African-Americans, however, marginalised, are citizens of the United States. Native Americans and African-Americans, however disenfranchised, are citizens of the world's most powerful nation-state; on the other hand, many third-world immigrants are quite well-off portions of society. Indigenous community relocation and land theft are also distinguishing elements of many areas that have been privileged in postcolonial studies of South Asia and Africa. Finally, as evidenced by environmental battles in South Asia and Africa, displacement of indigenous groups and land theft are distinguishing elements of many regions emphasised in postcolonial studies, such as South Asia and Africa. Chittaroopa Palit, one of the leaders of the NBA, says that she and her comrades ‘learnt a lot about the structures and processes of globalization through these struggles’. Especially valuable was the lesson that 

though international political factors, such as the character of the governments involved, the existence of able support groups in the North that play an important part, they cannot supplant the role of a mass movement struggling on the ground. Soon after the SPD government in Berlin refused a guarantee to Siemens, the German multinational, for building the dam in Maheshwar, it agreed to underwrite the company’s involvement in the Tehri dam in the Himalayas and the catastrophic Three Gorges Dam in China—both just as destructive as the Narmada project; but in neither instance were there strong mass struggles on the ground. 

(Palit) 

Palit examines how the NBA created new means of resistance by drawing on the vast experience and wisdom of the local people. Arundhati Roy, a writer, reminds us that tribal people in Central India have a long history of resistance dating back centuries. However, its self-conception and tactics were inspired by Gandhian anti-colonialist approaches, and it drew significant support from women's groups, labour unions, and left parties in the country, as well as links with other people's movements globally.

[Words: 1406]

Midnight's Children: Thinking Activity

Midnight's Children 

This blog is a response to the thinking activity task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog, I will share my view on the narrative technique of the novel and film adaptation, themes, symbols, and texture of Midnight's Children.

Salman Rushdie is one of the most recognized names in the literary world. He is most well known for his controversial 1988 novel, "The Satanic Verses." He has written over twenty-five books including Midnight's Children, which won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1981. The novel has been translated into over 40 languages.

Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel Midnight's Children is about India's journey from British colonial authority to independence and division. It is a postcolonial, postmodern, and magical realism narrative portrayed in the background of historical events by its main protagonist, Saleem Sinai. It is self-reflexive to preserve history through fictitious stories.

Midnight's Children is an epic story of independent India told from the perspective of Indian children born at the moment when India gained her independence from Britain. The novel follows Saleem Sinai, the narrator of the story, from his birth to his death as he lives through the impact of partition, war, and nuclear weapons. The novel is told in a non-chronological order, often times jumping through time, even within a single sentence. As a result, the reader can only understand the full picture of the story by connecting the different events and understanding the various themes and symbolism. The reader must analyze the themes and symbols of this novel. This novel is having magic realism as a background but it's not a completely fictional work, it's also a postcolonial and post-modern novel. the novel is telling many stories within stories in order to tell the truth of India's ruthless political reign.

Narrative Techniques:

In Midnight's Children, Rushdie employs the first-person narrative method. The novel's characters are introduced long before they appear in the novel. It builds suspense in the minds of the readers. The novel spans seventy-five years in the history of the Indian subcontinent. Saleem Sinai, the protagonist, tells the narrative of his birth and the beginning of the Indian subcontinent. The story blurs the chronological lines. Saleem Sinai, Rushdie's counterpart, relates his narrative from a distance of time and place. Like the Mahabharta narrator, Sanjay, who has the ability to see things from a distance and recounts the events of the Kurukshetra battle, Saleen has magical abilities that allow him to see from a distance and read the minds of readers.

The novel's narrative structure and the film adaptation, which has the same name as the novel, are completely different, and we never find it to be a significant concern when it comes to movies vs. novels as Rushdie contends,

 “that stories and films are different things, and that the source material must be modified, even radically modified, to be effective in the new medium” 

 The difference in narrative style between novels and movies is due to the fact that both are separate genres and a movie cannot contain all that a novel can, therefore writers prefer to improvise, but in this situation, the author of the novel and the scriptwriter of the movie are the same person. We don't expect many narrative twists when the author of the novel writes the screenplay. In the narrative, Saleem Sinai tells his experience to Padma Mangroli, his lover and, later, his fiancée. Padma takes on the role of the listener in the novel's storytelling framework.

Symbols in Midnight's Children:

Silver Spittoon:

Spittoons may be found throughout Midnight's Children. By revisiting the spittoon motif in numerous circumstances, Rushdie weaves significance into the picture and offers the reader with a reference point and familiar angle of insight into the meaning of his tale.

One particular spittoon, an extraordinary silver spittoon inlaid with lapis lazuli, appears at the beginning of the story at the Rani of Cooch Naheen's house and follows the course of the narrative almost until the end, where it is eventually buried under the rubble of civic reconstruction by a bulldozer. Rushdie's persona At various points in the novel, Saleem comments on the significance of the spittoon, yet spittoons take on broader and more hazy significance in other portions. For Saleem, the silver spittoon serves as a link to reality. When Parvati-the-Witch has dematerialized Saleem, she says the following:

"What I held on to in that ghostly time-and-space: a silver spittoon. Which, transformed like myself by Parvati-whispered words, was nevertheless a reminder of the outside . . . clutching finely-wrought silver, which glittered even in that nameless dark, I survived. Despite head-to-toe numbness, I was saved, perhaps, by the glints of my precious souvenir."

and near the end of the book, at the event of the spittoon's loss:

"I lost something else that day, besides my freedom: bulldozers swallowed a silver spittoon. Deprived of the last object connecting me to my more tangible, historically verifiable past, I was taken to Benares to face the consequences of my inner, midnight-given life." 

 These two quotations show that the spittoon means the same thing to Saleem as it does to the reader. It's a welcome home, a charming but basic reminder of reality in a world that attempts to overwhelm with the sheer volume and variety of its voices and experiences. Saleem is subjected to the voices of a thousand and one Midnight's Children, which threaten to drown out his sense of himself as an individual human, as well as the numerous physical and psychological beatings inflicted on him throughout his life; the reader is similarly assaulted by Rushdie's novel's overwhelming density and pace.