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Imaginary Homeelands: Literature as Freedom

Salman Rushdie’s “Imaginary Homelands” calls for freedom from a physical homeland and the restrictions that some impose on those physical space (e.g. that one must choose one, that one must adhere to the version and regulations dictated within that space by politicians for instance). Rushdie says essentially that (1) the homelands people imagine as static and pertaining to them are only imagined to be (which is limiting, but including diasporas and nation-states alike) and (2) that there is a higher status of imaginary which itself can become a freeing homeland, not attached to anything but the space in between identities and varied realities. He imagines that there is infinite possibilities that literature can provide, but often even many artists do not take advantage of the full spectrum of potential. The final image from a Bellow novel clearly puts forth this notion, with the concept of a barking dog often misinterpreted, but perhaps still clamoring in protest about the limit of h...
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Spiral of Time in Potiki

Potiki is a story focusing on a Maori community fighting to maintain their autonomy from hungry land developers who are desperately trying to coerce the Maori people off of their sacred land. The author, Patricia Grace, constructs the story through a patchwork of memories, where different events, different times, and different viewpoints come together in like a mosaic.   Grace disrupts the linear narrative and describes time in a cyclical way, a never-ending spiral. Rather than segregating time the “past time” of the ancestors from the “present time” of the community, there is a new way of describing time. I found “now-time” to be a fascinating concept, where there’s this spiral temporality where past and future time are narratively experienced. The concept of “sacred time” was more challenging to understand, where the narrative of Christ and the and the ancient myth of Mäui align.   The spiral, like kowhaiwhai, signifies repetition with a difference. Toko...
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The New and Old

          I think it was Jasmine that so demonized the characteristics of “old India”. It spoke of superstition, of futile pursuits, and of a lack of agency. The “old India”, the recently postcolonial India lacked a motivation to it. The “new India” as it were, thought to be prime for a younger generation of rationalists, working in “productive”, timely jobs like tech and medicine. It was believed that the two were incompatible and one could not exist without the vanquish of the other. But I would argue that Dharma’s Love and Longing in Bombay , from what we have read views the India of old in a much more romantic light. Can it be no wonder that the very solution to Jago’s problem is an embrace of the ancient and spiritual? Jago’s apparent conversion then seems to be the driving force of this excerpt and, in turn, an attempt at blending or at least fostering a camaraderie between the “new” and “old” India’s.         ...
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