Litinfinite (Dec 2021)
Re-Narrating the Postcolonial Subject within Neo-Liberal Spaces: A Study on the Role of Travel as Depicted in the Contemporary Postcolonial Novel
Abstract
The objective of this study is to re-interpret the idea of travel, represented in the postcolonial novel, as a motif that brings out the dialectic influence of neo-liberal values in defining the contemporary postcolonial subject. As a literary cannon, postcolonial literature is primarily concerned with bringing into light the experience of being colonised by the “white” Europeans, and the struggles of oscillating between two value systems, i.e., the indigenous value systems and the values brought into the colonies by the colonisers. Therefore,the years after 1950s saw the emergence of a host of authors, who in their mother tongue or in the coloniser’s tongue narrated such experiences, while various Eastern and Western critics were interested in theorising the postcolonial subject. The present study contends that, a break in the continuity of such a tradition could be observed with the global spread of neo-liberalism during late 1970s and 1980s, which could be discerned through how the idea of travel being represented in the postcolonial novel. Through a close reading of Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land (1992) and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008), the study points out the significant role the idea of travel can play in portraying the neo-liberal dialect which has restructured the traditional relationship between colonised and the coloniser. It argues that the emergence of multiple centres of power, liquidation of geographical boarders and the rapid economisation of all spheres of life, have made the polarised relationship of a colonised and a coloniser redundant, demanding a re-narration of postcolonial subjectivity.
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