“Snapshots of Caliban”: Suniti Namjoshi’s ‘Contrapuntal Rewriting’ of The Tempest

Abstract

Abstract:

In Culture and Imperialism, Said suggests that Caliban should ally himself with all subjugated people, yet in his works he dedicates little space to differences of gender or sexual orientation. In her cycle of poems “Snapshots of Caliban” (1984), Suniti Namjoshi amplifies Said’s concept of reading contrapuntally by offering a cultural resistance that is at the same time postcolonial, lesbian and feminist. Being at a crossroads of three variables, Namjoshi has a vantage point on imperialism and gives an alternative kind of ‘contrapuntal reading’ that is actually a ‘contrapuntal rewriting’, and therefore fosters new developments and possibilities in postcolonial studies.

DOI:-

Bibliography:

Ahmad, Aijaz. 1992. In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures. London-New York: Verso.

Aldrich,           Robert.        2003.       Colonialism           and       Homosexuality.            London-New           York: Routledge.

Auden, Wystan Hugh. 1968. Collected Longer Poems. London: Faber & Faber. Baski, Parminder Kaur. 1996. Distant Desire: Homoerotic Codes and the Subversion of the English Novel in E.M. Forster’s Fiction. New York: Peter Lang.

Bono, Paola. 2008. Il Crocevia della Scrittura di Suniti Namjoshi. Suniti Namjoshi & Paola Bono ed. Istantanee di Caliban. Sycorax. Napoli: Liguori Editore, XI-XXVII. Boone, Joseph A. 1995. Vacation Cruises; Or, the Homoerotics of Orientalism. PMLA, 110, 1: 89-107.

Césaire, Aimé. 1985. A Tempest. Based on Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’: Adaptation for a Black Theatre. New York: Ubu Repertory Theater Publications.

Cliff, Michelle. 1991. Caliban’s Daughter: The Tempest and the Teapot. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 12, 2: 36-51.

Donaldson, Laura E. 1992. Decolonizing Feminisms: Race, Gender & Empire Building. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Doolittle, Hilda. 1949. By Avon River. New York: Macmillan.

Fernández Retamar, Roberto. 1989. Caliban and Other Essays. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Forster, Edward Morgan. 1988. A Passage to India. London: Penguin.

Fraiman, Susan. 1995. Jane Austen and Edward Said: Gender, Culture and Imperialism. Critical Inquiry, 21, 4: 805-821.

Greenblatt, Stephen. 1990. Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. London-New York: Routledge.

Guarracino, Serena. 2010. Competing Hegemonies: Can Suniti Namjoshi Be Named ‘Black British’? Textus, XXIII: 421-436.

Gubar, Susan. 1998. What Ails Feminist Criticism? Critical Enquiry, 24: 878-902.

Kanaganayakam, Chelva. 1995. Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and their World. Toronto: TSAR Publications.

Kaur Baski, Parminder. 1996. Distant Desire: Homoerotic Codes and the Subversion of the English Novel in E.M. Forster’s Fiction. New York: Peter Lang.

Kincaid. Jamaica. 1997. Annie John. London: Vintage.

Lamming, George. 1992. The Pleasures of Exile. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Lewis,            Reina.          1996.          Gendering             Orientalism:            Gender,            Femininity           and Representation. New York:Routledge.

López Springfield, Consuelo ed. 1997. Daughters of Caliban: Caribbean Women in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Mannoni, Octave. 1990. Prospero & Caliban: the Psychology of Colonization. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Namjoshi, Suniti. 1981. Feminist Fables. London: Sheba Feminist Publishers. Namjoshi, Suniti. 1984. From the Bedside Book of Nightmares. Fredericton: Fiddlehead Poetry Books/Gooselane Editions.

Namjoshi, Suniti. 1989. Because of India: Selected Poems and Fables. London: Onlywomenpress.

Namjoshi, Suniti & Gillian Hanscombe. 1991. Who Wrongs You Sappho? - Developing Lesbian Sensibility in the Writing of Lyric Poetry. Jane Aaron & Sylvia Walby ed. Out of the Margins: Women’s Studies in the Nineties. London: The Falmer Press, 156-167.

Namjoshi, Suniti. 1996. Building Babel. North Melbourne: Spinifex.

Namjoshi, Suniti. 2006. Sycorax: New Fables and Poems. New Delhi: Penguin Books India.

Rich, Adrienne. 1963. Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems, 1954-1962. New York: Harper.

Rich, Adrienne. 1972. When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision. College English, 34, 1: 18-30.

Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York-London: Vintage. Said, Edward. 2003. Orientalism. London: Penguin.

Shakespeare, William. 2000. The Tempest. London: Thomson Learning.

Vevaina, Coomi S. 1998. An Interview with Suniti Namjoshi. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 29, 1: 195-201.

Warner, Marina. 1992. Indigo, or Mapping the Waters. London: Chatto & Windus. Young, Robert. 1990. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London- New York: Routledge.