Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://rportal.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/handle/20.500.12235/219

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    Trying to Grow Out of Stereotypes: The Representation of Disability, Sexuality and the “Modern” Disability Subjectivity in Firdaus Kanga’s Novel
    (英語學系, 2018-03-??) Rimjhim Bhattacherjee
    Firdaus Kanga’s novel, Trying to Grow, tells the story of Brit Kotwal, a young Parsi boy with osteogenesis imperfecta, negotiating his life in the Bombay of the 1970s. From the beginning, this semi-autobiographical work draws our attention to the common religious and medical perceptions of disability in Indian society. This paper proposes to study how the novel focuses on several aspects of the lived reality of a person with “brittle bones” who does not grow more than four feet tall. The paper also explores how the novel focuses on and confounds the commonly perceived notion of the asexuality of disabled individuals. Brit’s voice is extremely aware and articulates positions of difference within disability and sexuality discourses. He is able to occupy what can be called a truly modern disability subjectivity. But, this paper shall show that Brit presents the reader with this modern, emancipatory rhetoric of disability because of the privileges of his gender and class status in the Indian context. Within the same text, Brit’s disabled female cousin is literally andfiguratively mute and meets with a very different fate. The paper shall thus investigate and try to complicate the representation of disability, sexuality and the “modern” disability subjectivity in Kanga’s novel.
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    Trying to Grow Out of Stereotypes: The Representation of Disability, Sexuality and the “Modern” Disability Subjectivity in Firdaus Kanga’s Novel
    (英語學系, 2018-03-??) Rimjhim Bhattacherjee
    Firdaus Kanga’s novel, Trying to Grow, tells the story of Brit Kotwal, a young Parsi boy with osteogenesis imperfecta, negotiating his life in the Bombay of the 1970s. From the beginning, this semi-autobiographical work draws our attention to the common religious and medical perceptions of disability in Indian society. This paper proposes to study how the novel focuses on several aspects of the lived reality of a person with “brittle bones” who does not grow more than four feet tall. The paper also explores how the novel focuses on and confounds the commonly perceived notion of the asexuality of disabled individuals. Brit’s voice is extremely aware and articulates positions of difference within disability and sexuality discourses. He is able to occupy what can be called a truly modern disability subjectivity. But, this paper shall show that Brit presents the reader with this modern, emancipatory rhetoric of disability because of the privileges of his gender and class status in the Indian context. Within the same text, Brit’s disabled female cousin is literally andfiguratively mute and meets with a very different fate. The paper shall thus investigate and try to complicate the representation of disability, sexuality and the “modern” disability subjectivity in Kanga’s novel.
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    Orwell’s Reflections on Saint Gandhi
    (英語學系, 2014-05-??) Gita V. Pai
    In 1949, George Orwell published “Reflections on Gandhi,” in which he offers a posthumous portrait of the Indian independence leader. My reading of the essay is at odds with some contemporary views voiced in the village of Motihari in Bihar, India, Orwell’s birthplace as well as the site of an historic visit by Gandhi in 1917. In this small Bihari village, a 48-foot pillar was erected in the 1970s to commemorate Gandhi, and more recently controversies have erupted over local attempts to construct a memorial to the famous English writer. Now some are working towards the 2017 completion of a Gandhi memorial park in this village, to mark the centennial of Gandhi’s visit and the beginnings of his civil disobedience movement. Local politicians claim that a relatively insignificant Orwell merely represents British oppression and an “enslaved India,” while Gandhi represents the liberation of the nation. “Reflections” complicates these views, and more generally complicates people’s understandings and memories of both historical figures, in South Asia and around the globe.