Riddles of Belonging

Merrill, Christi A.:
Riddles of belonging : India in translation and other tales of possession / Christi A. Merrill. - New York : Fordham University Press, 2009. - XIV, 380 S.
ISBN 978-0-8232-2955-0
US$ 70,00

Beschreibung
Can the subaltern joke? Christi A. Merrill answers by invoking riddling, oral-based fictions from Hindi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, and Urdu that dare to laugh at the details of contentious traditions often kept hidden - whether spouse abuse, ethnic violence, or the uncertain legacies of a divinely wrought sex change. Merrill argues that the playful lessons of these narratives offer insight into the networks of transnational relation connecting us across a sea of differences.
   A translator herself, Merrill uses these examples, especially from the work of Rajasthani writer Vijay Dan Detha, to investigate the expectation that translated work should allow the non-English-speaking subaltern to speak directly to the English-speaking reader. She plays with the trope of speaking to argue against treating a translated text as property and thus as a singular material object to be "carried across" (as trans-latus implies.) She refigures it instead as a performative "telling in turn" (from the Hindi word anuvad) to explain how a text might be multiply possessed. [Verlagsinformation]

Inhalt
Can the Subaltern Joke? (to open). 1
1. Humoring the Melancholic Reader of World Literature. 16
2. A Telling Example. 44
3. Framed. 105
4. A Divided Sense. 168
5. Passing On. 205
6. Narration in Ghost Time. 245
A Double Hearing (to close). 286
Notes. 297
Works Cited. 339
Index. 363

Autorin
CHRISTI A. MERRILL is Assistant Professor of South Asian Postcolonial Theory at the University of Michigan. Homepage.

Quelle: Fordham University Press; WorldCat; Amazon; Blackwell Bookshop Online.