Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion

Month: June 2015

Edward Said’s Orientalism: Building a Self-Reflexive History


Said’s Orientalism exposes the Eurocentric universalism built on a self-reflexive history in terms of the East. Said sets out to delineate the West’s supercilious stance and condescending conceptions of the East. Orientalism (1978) forms a trilogy with other works such as The Question of Palestine (1979) and Covering Islam (1981), the first of the two that established his career. Said examines the interplay of dichotomies that has been built under the tutelage of the West. Critics like Joshua Muravchik assert how the phenomenon hailed a new era for leftism in which ‘people of color’ substituted the proletariat as the redeemers of humankind.

Said’s work Beginnings is seen to be the beginning of this academic enterprise: “To begin to write, therefore, is to work a set of instruments, to invent a field of play for them to enable performance” (24). Edward Said begins the Introduction of Orientalism paraphrasing the narrative of a French journalist Thierry Desjardins as he expresses his view of the present day Orient foregrounding the stereotypical representation of the Orient. The passage refers to the French romantic travel writings  of Chateaubriand and Nerval and their construction of the Orient.This image of the Orient is much glorified in terms of the ones that created it, that  it comes across as immaterial that the place itself was sociologically affected.…

Poetry Analysis: R.Viswanathan’s “Grandfather”


“Grandfather” by R.Viswanathan is written to eulogize his grandfather who had an infectious joviality about him . The poem is about the death of the grandfather. However, it does not have a mournful tome or an elegiac tone. He is said to have laughed his way through life overcoming all trials and tribulations with ease. The alliteration in the phrase ‘lived long’ points to his harmonious life that was drunk to the lees. He made his folks laugh many times till all their bones broke.The speaker implies that his humour infused their very being and his buoyancy was the very core of their existence. Even while he was ill and the others around him were very pessimistic he inspired them with his incorrigible optimism and cracked jokes. Their bones broke but never did his spirit die. Though the speaker was not home during the incident, the experience was communicated to him with all the positive vibes intact. Therefore, grandfather transported his positivism to people at a distance also. The speaker was not home even when grandfather died, yet his still body seemed to laugh, according to the versions of others. His static body appeared to be kinetic.

The speaker comes home for Sanjayana to administer the last rites and goes with his Dad to the crematory.…

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