This is a sequel to my book, Colonial Odia Literature. The book encompasses the literature produced by the authors who were born after 1947. It traces the theoretical configurations of modernism all over the European literature and in the light of that paradigm analyses the poetry, fiction, drama and non- fictional prose works written in Odia literature in the 1960s and onwards.
In short, the book outlines the literary and aesthetic convictions of later day Romantics, their waging of a war of words against modernism, its sliding into aesthetic, stylistic fascism and experimental avant-garde. Gradually, the cultural paradigm shifts and the distinction between high art and low art are erased as we enter into the postmodern culture. The work of literary art turns into kitsch, a commodity in the mass culture/ consumerist market.
Although written for a particular vernacular community, the book makes itself relevant for all the linguistic communities of India and abroad. Here is an attempt to make modern and postmodern literature intelligible and attractive to as wide a readership as possible. The book would elicit the interests of the lawyers and academicians, students and literary critics, sociologists as well as cultural theorists.
RAMESH P. PANIGRAHI (b. 1944) was born in Dharakote, a suburban town of South Orissa, India and he lives in Bhubaneswar. Author of 85 plays, 6 films, a Hindi theatre anthropoloy, 100 lyrics for All India Radio, 20 published stories, and a novel, including the translation of Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease, Panigrahi has enriched Indian theatre for more than fifty years. His plays are translated and staged in Bengali, Hindi and Assamese. He has published plays in English also. He directs in group theatre productions and has worked as a professional director for 19 Jatra plays, composes music for college chorus songs and has worked as the technical director of a Prahallada Nataka team to participate in Kattaikkuttu Kalai Valarchi Munnetra Sangam, Kanchipuram, Tamilnadu. Panigrahi's plays for the folks and tribal people run continuously for 12 years in Jatra repetoires and for hundreds of shows on group theatre performances.
This is a sequel to my book Colonial Odia Literature which surveyed Odia literature written from late 19th century to the first two decades of the twenty-first century. This book is designed to survey Odia literature written by authors who were born after 1947. Logically, the title of this book should have been Post-colonial Odia Literature. But there are some difficulties.
Post-colonial studies critically analyze history, culture, literature and modes of discourse that are specific to former colonies of England, Spain, France and other European imperial powers. These studies have focused especially on the third world countries of Africa, Asia, the Caribean islands and South America. The cultural productions of New Zealand, Canada and Australia are also encompassed by post-colonial studies.
Odisha was in the British colony from 1803 to 1947. The literature produced during this period in Odisha could have been included and viewed through a post-colonial perspective. That would have revealed the extent to which the social and economic life depicted in the Odia literature was tacitly under-written by colonial masters.
(i) A discourse on the post-colonial would assert the negation of the master narrative of western imperialism. Our purpose in this book is not so.
(ii) The Odishan colony was subordinated and marginalized, but the authority of the colonizers did never repudiate our region as a literature producing site. Further, the Odia authors born after 1947 have not produced any counter narrative in which their literature has fought its way back.
(iii) The Odia writers (except Radhanath Ray, Madhusudan Rao and Nanda Kishore Bal) never considered themselves as inferior to the British cultural authorities. Some of our poets might have been influenced by Keats, Wordsworth or Shelley. But they never considered themselves either lowers in rank to them or as entities "under" them. They never succumbed to the psychological dominance of the British middle class culture in the colonies as Frantz Fanon pointed out in his Black Skin, White Masks (1967). The Odia authors born after 1947 possessed uncolonized minds and they thought and dreamt in Odia. Ninety per cent of them are Romantic and they wrote about clouds. A section of them, however, were intellectually trained by the colonial legacy, but never considered colonialism as an instrument of progress. On the other hand, they manifested intellectual anarchy which was the other name of Romanticism.
(iv) The litterateurs born after 1947 do not know that W.W. Hunter, Amos Sutton and A. Sterling's "discoveries" of Odisha were not elegantly described; rather they have described Odisha as an archetype of barbarism and savage idolatry. So, they considered it prestigious to restructure our state as the occident's double. That would rather have fitted to the needs of colonialism. Thus, the literature which they have produced is not exactly as resistant as post- colonial literature would be. British administrators like T.E. Ravenshaw and John Beams have treated Odia culture and language reverently and British scholars like J.V. Boulton have learnt the language and have written doctoral theses on Odia authors. They have showered praises on Odia trust- worthiness, innocence and sincerity. The agenda of post- colonial literature to disestablish Eurocentric norms of artistic and literary values do not apply here.
This book does not propose to brand the post-1947 literature "post-colonial" though such literature seems to this author as a werful cultural event in the history of Odisha. This geographical ritory called Odisha was formed as a linguistic state in 1936, t a decade before independence. We do not see the post-1947 erature as a site of post-colonial politics and power play. Postonial readings of literary texts show how race and power are guised in the texts' themes. We do not seek to expose the itical, racial and masculine (Patriarchal) politics that are encoded o literary themes.
Basing on broader considerations, we have captioned this book Modern Odia Literature though we have incorporated many thors of the younger generation who are distinctly post-modern.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
For privacy concerns, please view our Privacy Policy
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist