Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vpsfw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-24T08:29:53.212Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Dead That Haunt Anil's Ghost: Subaltern Difference and Postcolonial Melancholia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Mrinalini Chakravorty
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Anil's Ghost, Michael Ondaatje's haunting novel about the Sri Lankan civil war, probes paradoxes that arise in postcolonial fictional representations of transnational violence. What is conveyed by novels of war and genocide that cast the whole of a decolonial territory as a “deathworld”? The prism of death in Anil's Ghost requires readers of this text to relinquish settled notions of how we as humans understand our finitude and our entanglements with the deaths of others. Postcolonial fictions of violence conjoin historical circumstance with phantasmatic expressions to raise important questions about mourning, collective agency, and the subalternity of postcolonial societies. Advancing a theory about “postcolonial crypts” in fiction, I argue that postcolonial fictions' attention to violence transforms notions about the value of human life appraised through a dominant human rights framework.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 128 , Issue 3 , May 2013 , pp. 542 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abeysekara, Ananda. The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mourning Secular Futures. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abraham, Nicolas. “Notes on the Phantom: A Complement to Freud's Metapsychology.” Abraham and Torok, Shell 170-76.Google Scholar
Abraham, Nicolas, and Torok, Maria. The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis. Vol. 1. Ed. and trans. Nicholas T. Rand. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Abraham, Nicolas, and Torok, Maria. The Wolf Man's Magic Word: A Cryptonymy.Google Scholar
Trans. Nicholas T. Rand. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Heller-Roazen, Daniel. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. On Suicide Bombing. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Bandarage, Asoka. The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka: Terrorism, Ethnicity, Political Economy. Bloomington: iUniverse, 2009. Print.Google Scholar
Burrows, Victoria. “The Heterotopic Spaces of Postcolonial Trauma in Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost.” Studies in the Novel 40.1-2 (2008): 161–77. Print.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso, 2009. Print.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Chakravorty, Mrinalini, and Neti, Leila. “The Human Recycled: Insecurity in the Transnational Moment.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 20.2-3 (2009): 194–223. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamberlain, Gethin. “Sri Lanka Death Toll ‘Unacceptably High,‘ Says UN.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 29 May 2009. Web. 10 Apr. 2013.Google Scholar
Daniel, E. Valentine. Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrickson, Teresa. “Will the ‘Un-truth’ Set You Free? A Critical Look at Global Human Rights Discourse in Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost.” Literature Interpretation Theory 15 (2004): 131–52. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. The Gift of Death. Trans. Wills, David. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Devi, Mahasweta. Breast Stories. Trans. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Kolkata: Seagull, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Devi, Mahasweta. Imaginary Maps. Trans. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976. Ed. Bertani, Mauro and Fontana, Alessandro. Trans. Macey, David. New York: Picador, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization audits Discontents. Ed. and trans. Strachey, James. New York: Norton, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. Ed. and trans. Strachey, James. New York: Norton, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” 1917. On Murder, Mourning, and Melancholia. Trans. Whiteside, Shaun. London: Penguin, 2005. 201–18. Print.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. “Repression.” 1915. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. Strachey, James. Vol. 14. London: Hogarth, 1957. 143–58. Print.Google Scholar
Ganapathy-Doré, Geetha. “Fathoming Private Woes in a Public Story: A Study of Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost.” Jouvert 6.3 (2002): n. pag. Web. 10 Apr. 2013.Google Scholar
Goldman, Marlene. “Representations of Buddhism in Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost.” Comparative Literature and Culture 6.3 (2004): n. pag. Web. 10 Apr. 2013.Google Scholar
Guha, Ranajit. “Chandra's Death.” Subaltern Studies 5 (1987): 135–65. Print.Google Scholar
Hoole, Rajan. Sri Lanka: The Arrogance of Power: Myths, Decadence and Murder. Jaffna: University Teachers for Human Rights, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald L. The Deadly Ethnic Riot. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Riverhead, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Ismail, Qadri. Abiding by Sri Lanka: On Peace, Place, and Postcoloniality. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Ismail, Qadri. “A Flippant Gesture towards Sri Lanka: A Review of Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost.” Pravada 6.9 (2000): 24–29. Print.Google Scholar
JanMohamed, Abdul R. The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright's Archaeology of Death. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kanaganayakam, Chelva. “The Anxiety of Being Postcolonial: Ideology and the Contemporary Postcolonial Novel.” Miscelanea 28 (2003): 43–54. Print.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence: Volume 4, June 1921-March 1924. Ed. Roberts, Warren, Boulton, James T., and Mansfield, Elizabeth. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
LeClair, Tom. “The Sri Lankan Patients.” Rev. of Anil's Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje. Nation 19 June 2000: 31. Web. 10 Apr. 2013.Google Scholar
Mbembe, Achille. “Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos Tutuola.” Research in African Literatures 34.4 (2003): 1–26. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15.1 (2003): 11–40. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClennan, Sophia A., and Slaughter, Joseph R. “Introducing Human Rights and Literary Forms; or, The Vehicles and Vocabularies of Human Rights.” Comparative Literary Studies 46.1 (2009): 1–19. Print.Google Scholar
Mutua, Makau. “Savages, Victims, Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights.” Harvard International Law Journal All (2001): 201–45. Print.Google Scholar
Ondaatje, Michael. Anil's Ghost. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Ondaatje, Michael. Handwriting: Poems. New York: Knopf, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Ondaatje, Michael. Interview by Maya Jaggi. Writing across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk. London: Routledge, 2004. 250–64. Print.Google Scholar
Ondaatje, Michael. Running in the Family. New York: Norton, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa “Experiments with Freedom: Milieus of the Human.” American Literary History 18.2 (2006): 229–44. Print.Google Scholar
Pallister, David, and Chamberlain, Gethin. “Sri Lanka War Toll Near 6,500, UN Report Says.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 Apr. 2009. Web. 10 Apr. 2013.Google Scholar
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1985. Print.Google Scholar
Ratti, Manav. “Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost and the Aestheticization of Human Rights.” Ariel 35.2 (2004): 121–39. Print.Google Scholar
Scanlan, Margaret. “Anil's Ghost and Terrorism's Time.” Studies in the Novel 36.3 (2004): 302–17. Print.Google Scholar
Siddiqi, Yumna. Anxieties of Empire and the Fiction of Intrigue. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence. Champaign: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271–314. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri. Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri. “The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Readingthe Archives.” History and Theory 243 (1985): 247–72. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri. “Righting Wrongs.” South Atlantic Quarterly 103.2-3 (2004): 523–81. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri.“Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography.” In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge, 1987. 197–221. Print.Google Scholar
Staels, Hilde. “A Poetic Encounter with Otherness: The Ethics of Affect in Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost.” University of Toronto Quarterly 76.3 (2007): 977–89. Print.Google Scholar
Stanton, Katherine. Cosmopolitan Fictions: Ethics, Politics, and Global Change in the Works of Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Ondaatje, Jamaica Kincaid, and J. M. Coetzee. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. “Death and the Subaltern.” Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea. Ed. Morris, Rosalind C. New York: Columbia UP, 2010. 117–38. Print.Google Scholar
Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. Print.Google Scholar