Varieties of Cultural Chauvinism and the Relevance of Comparative Studies
Tilottoma Misra
The archival material used by social scientists is often inadequate to preserve the disturbing memories of traumatic events. Only an analytical approach to literary texts would illuminate the process by which, in Gramsci’s words, “every real historical phase leaves traces of itself in succeeding phases.“ History becomes relevant for the present only because of such traces of the past embedded in people’s memory, and literary texts can effectively preserve these traces in the most unlikely of places. Notes 1 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities, Verso, London, 2006, p.184. 2 Foreword to L.N. Bezbaroa’s Ratan Munda, translated from the Asamiya original by Bina Misra, Sahitya Akademi, 1973. 3 Afterword to Saraswativijayam by Potheri Kunhambu, 1892, translated from Malayalam by Dilip Menon, New Delhi, 2002. Pages: 1 2 3 4 |
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Rethinking the Global South
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