Literary Research / Recherche littéraire, nos. 39-40, 2003

LR/RL

Literary Research/Recherche littéraire 20.39-40 (2003): 323-326

Pankaj K. Singh, ed., The Politics of Literary Theory and Interpretation. Writings on activism and aesthetics. New Delhi: Manohar, 2003; 222 pp.; ISBN: 8173044546; $29.95

Juxtaposing activism and aesthetics, or literary theory and politics, is no nouvelle frisson in this day and age; perhaps all the more reason, then, for pausing to think about the exact connotation of each of these much (ab)used words and the inter-relationships between them — inter-relationships that constitute the "public" and "private" lives of people in the humanities, beleaguered by the onslaught of diminishing investment and returns in a historical conjuncture that purports to understand only the maximization of utility. Having written that sentence, one wonders how many readers — students-colleagues — can keep their patience until the end of it. And therein lies the dilemma of the literary critic/practitioner. Are we merely "men (sic!) of letters" or do the material realities that constitute [end page 323] those letters matter to us? The essays in the volume under consideration, dedicated to the "memory of Jaidev," attempt to engage with this central question that cannot but be the focus of an education and a pedagogy in the humanities. In order to understand the relevance of this focus, however, one needs a preliminary acquaintance with the person whose untimely demise occasioned the coming together of this volume. Indeed a number of the contributors do introduce Professor Jaidev, and the variety of their reminiscences bring before us a "Nachiketa ready to walk on the razor's edge" (Dev 67) a teacher of English whose journey through life, moved him from the language of the colonizer to a deep understanding and engagement with Indian languages and literatures, deep enough to discern that

the narrator in several of our self-evidently Indian (as opposed to India shouting) narratives builds a rapport with the reader… no writer might think of any individual reader: still there is in the novels of Verma and Vaid, some kind of sharing between the narrator and the characters, not between the narrator and readers. This sharing tone can be misused, but by dropping it for the sake of modernism or whatever the novelist leaves so much communicative space to anyone interested in using it. (68)

And such an understanding prompts from the recipient of the letter in which it is lodged, a fundamental insight that can well serve as an analytical tool for reading the "Indian" in Indian writing:

[Jaidev's] critique of Nirmal Verma and Krishna Baldev Vaid and their like was motivated by their lack of location and historicity, their shying away from the enormity and irreducibility of the world around them and casting instead an absolute interior where class and caste are superfluous, gender the other name of sexuality, material inequality an unfortunate given and so on. (69)

Only a critic committed to the "Indian" in Indian literature can climb down from the ivory towers of academia and transcend the barriers of an education in the colonizer's language as well as the allure of the cultural imperialist's theory, and attain to the level of literatures that speak of the many realities inhabiting a multi-lingual, multi-cultural milieu. As many writers in this volume have argued, the obsessions of "post"colonial discourse are increasingly suspect both from the point of view of their original germinating grounds, in what African critic Paul Tiyambe Zeleza calls the "universities of the west," and, from the point of view of their [end page 324] application in the places and literatures they were conjured up (and I use this word consciously) to study. Thus in this collection, non-resident practitioners like Mukherji (177-92) and Indian writers like Jain (159-76) and Dahiya (193-202) have questioned the efficacy of these theories and the aptness of their application, at least to Indian literatures. It is salutary to note that Jaidev's practice and memory serve as the occasion for such questions. But it is also necessary to note that most of the writers in this volume, with the exception of Dev and Tejwant Singh Gill, come from English Literature Departments and all with the exception of Dev are trained to teach single literatures. That Jaidev himself started from such a limited, and, in the larger Indian context, inadequate as well as alienating location, serves all the more to indicate the depth of his sincerity in posing questions relating academy and activism.

A person who realizes the sheer futility of, not only the locational status of a typical English Literature orientation in Indian academia, but also, of the methodological inadequacy of single literature's pedagogical and ideological constraints, is able to embark on a fruitful quest for the "Indianness" of Indian literatures. Little wonder then that Jaidev's intellectual relationship with Dev, the only practicing comparatist represented in this volume, is one "that required," in Dev's words, "a lot of talking" (67). This could be because the methodology of Comparative Literature emphasizes the location of the writer, the reader and the critic. And it is from this that Indian critics and writers like Jaidev, who realize the epistemological and cultural limitations of English as a medium of transaction, should be able to draw maximum sustenance in their engagements with Indian literatures as well as the milieu in which they practice their craft. Jaidev's essays in Part I of this volume provide evidence of his interest and use of this methodology. That he was successful in his ventures into a terrain removed from institutional and canonical English Literature practice is evident from the tribute that Mahasweta Devi pays him. Jaidev's intricate, thoroughly located reading of Mahasweta's many-layered, complex tale, "Douloti" amply proves this. As one reads this essay ("Not by Law Alone: Douloti as a national allegory": 25-52) one remembers the inadequacy of even a committed western critic like Jameson in his insistence that all third world narrative can be read as nationnal allegory. But one also remembers that, taking issue with Spivak's more nebulous but theoretically sophisticated deconstructivist/Marxist/feminist approach, Mahasweta had insisted that the central character of "Stanadayini" (translated by Spivak as "Breast Giver," in In Other Worlds, 1987), the wet nurse Jashoda, the breast giver herself, is an allegory for the "post"colonial nation that is milked by all its so-called citizens, and abandoned to die. Neither the well-meaning western critic, nor the non-resident star of "poco" theory, seem to be addressing the issues that the writer herself wishes to foreground; this seems to be due to [end page 325] their different locations, their various individual theoretical concerns. Hence, a critic like Jaidev who shares the same locational space as the writer and strives to achieve this space in not only physical but epistemological terms as well, is best able to address the issues that prompts Mahasweta to comment, "Jaidev was the only critic who understood me" (84).

This acknowledgement may well announce the beginning of a new chapter in Indian literary and critical practice. Fresh consideration of the contributions of a pioneer in the field like Professor Sisir Kumar Das, who left us earlier this year, and Professor Jaidev, have further accentuated the exciting prospects of Comparative Literature theory, practice and pedagogy. Single literature departments in general, and English Literature departments in particular, are bewildered to find that their areas of operation are fast becoming irrelevant and the only means of survival can be a direct interface with Comparative methodology and practice. That most of them are still attempting to hide their attempts at survival behind the fig leaf of Culture Studies, rather than acknowledge their debts, is an ontological problem that they will have to deal with themselves. Their desperate maneuvers do not in any way reflect the essentiality and the sheer potential of Comparative Literature itself. In such a milieu, the life and work of Professor Jaidev becomes all the more relevant for his ability, as one who began with English, to confront this reality and engage with it — it signals, for those who are honest enough to read the signs, the immense possibilities of Comparative Literature as a discipline of the future, in a time when a committed belief in dialogue, and an active, even activist, investment in plurality, are of the essence.

Ipshita Chanda

Javadpur U., Calcutta