Imaginary Homeland

 

Hello friends,

A critical essay is a form of academic writing that analyzes, interprets, and/or evaluates a text. In a critical essay, an author makes a claim about how particular ideas or themes are conveyed in a text, then supports that claim with evidence from primary and/or secondary sources. 

In casual conversation, we often associate the word "critical" with a negative perspective. However, in the context of a critical essay, the word "critical" simply means discerning and analytical. Critical essays analyze and evaluate the meaning and significance of a text, rather than making a judgment about its content or quality.

In this blog, we will analyse Rushdie's several essays collected in Imaginary Homeland.

In his essay Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie voices the political and cultural plight of the migrant and of the writer as an exile,  migrant or expatriate in particular. The latter creates from fragments of memory, a kin to the broken  mirror which may actually be as valuable as the ones supposedly unflawed, an Imaginary Homeland. If this Imaginary Homeland exists due to the migrant -- whether from one country to another, from one language or culture to another or even from a traditional rural society to a modern metropolis, then in contemporary times the idea of a homeland is increasingly becoming inhabited in imagination.

Imaginary Homeland

What is homeland?

Homeland as a trope in the printed and visual text has followed trajectories that evolved in context to the notion of the nation and the nation-state since the rise of Modern Europe. Since then in Europe national boundaries have repeatedly changed, with the European Union substantively reducing the traditional significance of national boundaries and engendering a pan European identity.

However, most of the erstwhile colonies of the West, where according to Benedict Anderson the nation and nationalism developed in context to colonialism, are markedly grappling to cement the contours of the nation state and confer a national identity to their people. Both these developments, despite their differences challenge the established concepts of the homeland.

A place called home with its ideal of a fixed, rooted space is also being redefined by the waves of migration from homeland to homeland in the wake of the contemporary forms of globalization. 

The philosopher, Flusser, raises questions about the viability of ideas of national identity in a world whose borders are becoming increasingly arbitrary and permeable.

Flusser argues that modern societies are in flux, with traditional linear epistemologies being challenged by global circulatory networks and a growth in visual stimulation. 

The resultant rootlessness and homelessness further contribute to the homeland becoming an increasingly imagined space.

Post-Colonialism 

Postcolonialism is the study of the effects of colonisation on cultures and societies around the world. 

In the words of M. H. Abrams, 

it refers to 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.

Salman Rushdie generally writes from a conscious postcolonial and diasporic position.

In “Imaginary Homelands”, he deals at some length with the issue of one crucial colonial legacy as far as literature is concerned 

“the use of the English language in postcolonial societies”. 

Postcolonial societies have constantly displayed ambivalence towards the continued use of the English language.

Rushdie says that the Indian writers who do use English do so in spite of their ambiguous feelings towards it, or even perhaps because of it. In fact, the language used by Rushdie in his fictional works is not the standard or ‘correct’ English, but it is flavored with local coinages and idioms which better expresses the experiences of the societies of the subcontinent.

Rushdie is of the opinion that,

"This idea — the opposition of imagination to reality, 

which is also of course the opposition of art to politics — is of great importance, because it reminds us that we are  not helpless;

that to dream is to have power. And I suggest that the true location of Brazil is the other great tradition in art, the one in which techniques of comedy, metaphor, heightened imagery, fantasy and so on are used to break down our conventional, habit-dulled certainties about what the world is and has to be.

Unreality is the only weapon with which reality can be smashed, so that, it may subsequently be reconstructed."

Common Wealth Literature Does not exist

The number of titles, however, reflects the growing international importance of such writings as evidenced this month at the London Festival of Commonwealth Literature, with writers coming from around the globe.

The nine-day festival, sponsored by the Commonwealth Foundation and the University of London among others, will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and mark the Year of the Commonwealth in Britain.

Perhaps the only thing that is common to Commonwealth Literature is the English language, yet it is English with a difference. In a Caribbean short story, for instance, the narrative may be in the ‘Queen’s English’, while the dialogue may be in Creole. The same goes for African as well as Indian literature where indigenous words are incorporated without translation.

It is an important milestone because many universities around the world now have courses in Commonwealth Literature, or some similar nomenclature, and academics are churning out books seemingly at the same pace as the fiction writers, poets and dramatists.

But What is Commonwealth Literature? Many years after the term came into being, it still causes disagreement,

“Isn’t this the very oddest of beasts… a school of literature whose supposed members deny vehemently that they belong to it? Worse these denials are simply disregarded! It seems the creature has taken on a life of its own,”

Rushdie has written.

He added that the nearest definition of Commonwealth literature he could get sounded patronising because it appeared to be “that body of writing created … in the English language, by persons who are not themselves white Britons, or Irish, or citizens of the United States of America.”

But even if Commonwealth Literature does not exist, the Commonwealth itself certainly does. The Commonwealth of Nations, to give it its original name, is an association of states comprising Britain and its former colonies, along with their dependencies.

‘Commonwealth Literature’ is thus used to cover the literary works from territories that were once part of the British Empire, but it usually excludes books from the United Kingdom unless these are produced by resident writers who originate from a former colony. The great irony, however, is that much of the best literature that has emerged from Britain in the last years has been produced by writers from or with roots in colonies.

These writers include V.S. Naipaul , Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, Timothy, and the late Jean Rhys. Their excellence has led to articles and even books being titled ‘The Empire Writes Back’.

‘Commonwealth Literature’ is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘post-colonial literatures’ although the latter could include literatures in other languages as well, such as French or Portuguese.

Postcolonial literature relates non-Western literatures on the basis of a common historical experience: colonialism.

 Postcolonial literature is concerned both with Western and non-Western texts.

Attenborough's Gandhi

Movies are not texts; they are often two hours or less and utilize sound and imagery to convey a message. Movies are logistically limited in what they can show; after all, it is very difficult if not entirely impossible to capture the same amount of information in a movie that a book about the same topic might contain. Yet, that analysis is very surface-level, because it prioritizes breadth over depth. Books have the ability to cover every little minutiae and can take hundreds of pages meticulously describing out every detail. Films, on the other hand, are time-constrained, and thus must make sacrifices. Sometimes these sacrifices omit important information that books or other mediums could have better portrayed; but other times they allow for interesting interpretations, and actually enhance the quality of the history that is told.

This video contains analysis of Rushdie's essay Attenborough's Gandhi. To study this essay in detail, watch this video.

Thank You.

 

References

Rushdie, Salman. “Imaginary Homelands (1992 Edition).” Open Library, Granta in Association with Penguin, 1 Jan. 1992, openlibrary.org/books/OL22373254M/Imaginary_homelands.