Tristan Keeble 1

Southampton Solent University

FACULTY OF THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES AND SOCIETY

This Dissertation is submitted in part fulfilment of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts

with Honours in Writing Contemporary Fiction at Southampton Solent University.

Supervisor: Dr Devon Campbell-Hall

Date of presentation: May 2012

BA (Hons) Writing Contemporary Fiction

Tristan Simon Keeble

“Escaping the Eurocentric Gaze in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997)”

May 2012

Tristan Keeble 2

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my dissertation supervisor Dr

Devon-Campbell Hall for her unflagging assistance and

direction. I would also like to acknowledge the

invaluable assistance of the staff of the Faculty of

Creative Industries and Society at Southampton Solent

University, in particular Dr Tom Masters and Sandra

Cain for their un-wielding support and tuition.

Tristan Keeble 3

Introduction

Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things (1997) explores an individual’s ability

(or lack of ability) to re-inscribe and thus de-legitimize power. Roy states that she was

interested in constructing new ways of seeing, or more exactly new ways of re-

interpreting and deconstructing power using the novel form.

So why then is The God of Small Things is widely regarded as a postcolonial

novel despite not addressing resistance to colonialism at the point of first contact and the

narrative written in the more modern setting of twentieth century Kerala? The answer is

in its connection to the new directions in a postcolonial critique that foregoes the mere re-

inscribing original source texts by considering those lost voices against the single history

of colonialism. Roy wants to change Eurocentrist perceptions of Global industrialisation

as well as to highlight the suffering created by the ideologies inherent in globalisation.

In The God of Small Things, Roy deals with the binary paradox which states that

the United States and Europe is pure and rational whilst the external and ‘orientalised’

world is irrational and barbaric and thus incapable of managing its own affairs. She also

addresses the binary distinctions of modern versus backward – specifically the effects of

neo- capitalist principles of economic growth and development on supposedly less

developed peoples.

Roy’s multi-timeline narrative is predominantly focused on the lives of a set of bi-

zygotic twins. Initially we experience the politics and power structures of an external,

adult world through the pre-politicized eyes of youth and then again through their more

experience adult eyes. Because the novel is located in India, there is a certain propensity

to view it through the frame of a ‘national matrix’ [Boehmer (2010, 170-81)], however,

the real subject matter is more universal, exploring the external influences of power on all

aspects of cultural separation after colonialism. The depiction of loss in Roy’s novel is

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both the loss of connection to the natural world and the loss of (as a result of the

ideological growth of globalisation) the fundamental connections that solidify rational

human interaction and social agency for all members of society at a global, national and

local level.

The intial hypothesis of this paper is that the search for a truly cosmopolitan

reality, offering sufficient agency to all those involved in the globalised social sphere,

remains constrained by the ideological battle at the root of both state-formation and

universalist ideologies. Those at the sharp- end of globalization are therefore co-opted

into a state-sanctioned competition of values that inevitably results in further degradation

of their material conditions. Roy reveals the localized effects of this competition of

values, simultaneously elevating the status and perspective of those unseen by pro-

globalisation eyes.

This paper will investigate the validity of Roy’s perceptions of power over the

powerless under three main headings: The God of Small Things as a postcolonial artefact,

the significance of objects in Roy’s fiction; and finally, Roy’s novel as a dissident

narrative.

Each chapter will be covered through analysis of specific themes related to their

proposed headings.

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Chapter 1: The God of Small Things

as a postcolonial artefact

The primary focus of this chapter is to identify the postcolonial agenda in Roy’s text. As

mentioned in the introduction The God of Small Things is a novel that deals with the

effects of globalisation on the individual. In strictly postcolonial protocol terms, Roy’s

novel seeks to map and deconstruct the post-imperialist mindset that creates the binarisms

and ideologies that supports and maintains the process of globalization. Such ideologies

are based on distinctly Western notions of modernity, development and social

consciousness. In that respect, Roy’s novel is postcolonial in the sense that her

foregrounding of alternative perspectives interrogates contemporary Western thinking

and ideology and leads to questioning the ethical ramifications of such thinking and

ideology to non-Western and colonized subjects. These attributes in Roy’s novel coincide

with Bill Ashcroft’s’ definition of the postcolonial, quoted by Pal Ahluwahlia in

Relocating Postcolonialism (2000):

‘Postcolonial’ does not mean ‘after colonialism’… It begins when the colonizers arrive and doesn’t finish when they go home. In that sense, postcolonial analysis examines the full range of responses to colonialism… All of these may exist in a single society, so the term ‘postcolonial society’ does not mean an historical left-over of colonialism, but a society continuously responding in all its myriad ways to the experience of colonial contact (Ashcroft 1997) [(2002, 196)].

In terms of Bill Ashcroft’s definition, Roy’ use of multi-timeframes, demonstrates

the chain of effects of both: the diminution of the British Empire and the expansion of

American capitalist imperialism. As stated by Julie Mullaney in her essay ‘“Globalizing

dissent”? Arundhati Roy, Local and Postcolonial Feminism in the Transnational

Economy’ (2006), Roy’s novel is seen as an ‘intervention’ against the ideologies

mentioned earlier. By viewing The God of Small Things as an ‘intervention’, the

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assumption is that Roy is interrogating the founding principles that drive the

contemporary form of globalization and revealing them as ethically reprehensible when

viewed through the everyday lives of those affected.

To best identify the postcolonial agenda in The God of Small Things this chapter

will investigate the origins of Eurocentric thought by unpicking Franz Fanon’s concept of

the ‘colonized mind’ and then analysing specific postcolonial tropes within the novel.

The colonized Mind

By viewing Eurocentrism through the lense of colonialism and neo-capitalist

globalization, we can gain insights into Roy’s critique of power and dominance. To

establish the topes of Western thought, the following quote from Said’s Culture and

Imperialism (1993) provides an initial impression of what constitutes a characteristically

Western mindset:

Cultural experience or indeed every cultural form is radically, quintessentially hybrid, and if it had been the practice in the West since Immanuel Kant to isolate cultural and aesthetic realms from the worldly domain, it is now time to rejoin them. This is by no means a simple matter, since – I believe – it has been the essence of experience in the West at least since the late eighteenth century not only to acquire distant domination and reinforce hegemony, but also to divide the realms of culture and experience into apparently separate spheres. [Said (1993, 67-68)] Said states that after colonisation it was also common practice to divide the

‘realms of culture and experience into apparently separate spheres’, thereby also

destroying cultural connections at a local level. What Said means when he states that

cultural and aesthetic realms have been separated from the worldly domain is that by

separating the link between culture and the ‘world’ in which it is produced, the cultural

aesthetic is devalued as a source of localised human knowledge and cultural connection.

Said is directing his critique towards a formative aspect of Western thinking, namely

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treating cultural and the aesthetic realities as being arbitrary or merely superficial to the

notion of existence.

Why this philosophy might be considered a distinctly Western mindset is evident

from the following quote from P.T. Raju in his essay ‘Existence: An Epistemological

Study’ (1951): ‘In Hegel’s philosophy, Being, Reality and Existence do not mean the

same. But in Indian philosophy, the three mean the same. Sat and Satta mean all three’

[(1951, pp. 265-277)]. Whilst Raju’s analysis of this difference from Hegelian philosophy

is a distinctly secular and nationalised interpretation of Indian thought but the conclusion

is universal: The separation of Being, Reality and Existence in Western thought results in

the separation of the aesthetic realms into a simulated commodity rather than as an

intrinsic part of the symbolic life of a living cultural order and has resulted in what Guy

Debord described as the ‘accumulation of spectacles’ on a global scale. Debord

elaborates as follows:

The images detached from every aspect of life merged into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. .. The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, it is the focal point of all vision and all consciousness… The spectacle is not a collection of image; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images [(2009, 24)].

What Debord is describing is the destruction of localised cultural connections and

their replacement with a supposedly universal aesthetic ideal, with no reference to the

local. As a result of this disconnection, Debord suggests that ‘the spectacle represents

itself simultaneously as society itself’ and becomes the ‘focal point of all vision and all

consciousness’. The global populace is symptomatically connected by image alone,

which then becomes the primary focus of all social relations. This ‘supercession’ of a

supposedly universal life into it’s representation as collective ‘art’ (referencing Walter

Benjamin) has meant that the Eurocentric aesthetic ideals, that in turn construct the

dominant global images have caused greater conflicts within a cultural context. Why? In

Tristan Keeble 8

a postcolonial context, the Western aesthetic has become the presumed ‘focal point’ for a

colonised conscious, which has resulted in the legitimising of western life as an ideal and

conversely for the colonised subject, a realisation that this ideal excludes them.

Roy reveals the effects of this process of separation of life and image and

replacement with a Western frame, throughout her novel. An example in the text is in the

family visit to the Abhilash Talkies, written through the frame of the twins’ Estha and

Rahel’s ‘combined conscious’. The scene takes place after Estha has been sexually

exploited by the Orangedrink Lemondrink man:

‘And there was Captain von Clapp-Trap [referring to the character Chacko], Christopher Plummer. Arrogant. Hardhearted. With a mouth like a slit. And a steelshrill police whistle. A captain with seven children, like a packet of peppermints. He pretended not to love them but he did. He loved them. He loved her (Julie Andrews), she loved him, they loved the children, the children loved them, and their beds were soft with Ei. Der. Downs… The clean white children, even the big ones, were scared of the thunder. To comfort them, Julie Andrews put them all in her clean bed, and sang them a clean song about a few of her favourite things… And then, in the minds of certain two-egg twin members of the audience in Abhilash Talkies, some questions arose that needed answers… Oh Captain von Trapp, Captain von Trapp, could you love the little fellow with the orange in the smelly auditorium? He’s just held the Orangedrink Lemondrink man's soo-soo in his hand, but could you love him still? And his twin sister? Tilting upwards with her fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo? Could you love her too? Captain von Trapp had some questions of his own. (a) Are they clean white children? No. (But sophie Mol is.) (b) Do they blow spit-bubbles? Yes. (But Sophie Mol doesn’t.) (c) Do they shiver their legs? Like clerks? Yes. (But Sophie Mol doesn’t.) (d) Have they, either or both, ever strangers’ soo-soos? N…Nyes. (But Sophie mol hasn’t.)” Then I’m sorry,’ Captain von Clapp Trapp said: ‘It’s out of the question. I cannot love them. I cannot be their Baba.

Tristan Keeble 9

(p.105-107)

Viewed through Estha and Rahel’s narrative frame, what becomes clear is that the

social compact that connects the family is ruptured because, in the moment of his crisis,

Estha’s self-comparison with an idealistic Westernised life presented in The Sound of

Music, fractures his sense of personal agency within his family. This event amplifies the

distance created between him and his would-be protector Chacko, who appears

reverential to the Western lifestyle presented. In terms of an anti-capitalist critique, Roy

is therefore pointing out how the idealistic imagery used to expand and promote the West

is socially reductive because of its spectacularly-attractive untruths as well as its

unapologetic ethnocentrism. Roy is therefore ensuring that the reader reflects on the

untruths that are contained within the attractive imagery presented within such a

globalised aesthetic.

An interesting point regarding Debord and Benjamin critique of Western thought

above is to note how Western poststructuralist theory contradicts new directions in

postcolonial theory. Benita Parry explains why in her essay ‘Directions and Dead Ends in

Postcolonial Studies’ (2006):

Said, who at the time Orientalism appeared (1978) was identified as Foucauldian, has since dissociated himself from “theoretical cults” where the pull and primacy of historical conditions is relegated (Said 1993, pp.366-7). Procedures fitting this description, and elsewhere as “facile textualist thought” that contrives to block the appeal to any kind of real world knowledge and experience” (Norris 1993, p.128), are abundantly manifest in those modes of postcolonial criticism where the politics of the symbolic order displaces the theory and practice of politics. [(2002, 66-67)]. Parry is therefore implying that the theoretical critique used by Eurocentric post-

structuralists detracts from the political cause at the root of postcolonial theory. Parry’s

sentiments are corroborated by Homi. K Bhaba: ‘Is the language of theory merely another

power ploy of the culturally privileged Western elite to produce a discourse of the Other

Tristan Keeble 10

that reinforces its own power-knowledge equation?’ [(1994, 30-31)]. This conflict of

‘theory’ also provides an interesting insight into Arundhati Roy’s novel as there

numerous instances within the text that appears to deliberately invite Western theoretical

criticism. From a purely academic persepective, it is possible that she wrote her novel

specifically for a Western readership with a deliberate political ‘intervention’ in mind?

This issue will be further discussed later on in relation to epistemic violence.

History

Turning now to an analysis of specific postcolonial tropes in Roy’s novel, including the

depiction of history as power and the notion of epistemic violence. Both of these tropes

are intrinsic aspects of her novel and are dealt with throughout the text. As far as her use

of history as a political force in the lives of her characters goes, there is a great deal of

postcolonial literature in which the notion of history as part of the colonial ‘story’ is at

the heart of a desire to re-inscribe supposedly concrete truths concerning colonialism.

Roy even quotes John Berger’s statement: ‘never again will a story be told as if it is the

only one’ [Roy (1997)] at the beginning of her novel. The sentiment behind this statement

is her desire to contest the practice of appropriating history as a source of validating

social dominance. Edward Said explains why the novel is such an important tool in

contesting the legitimacy of inscribed truths constructed by the historical grand narrative:

The appropriation of history, the historicisation of the past, the narrativisation of society, all of which give the novel its force, include the accumulation and differentiation of social space, space to be used for social purposes [(1993, 93)]. For Said, the novel in its ideal form provides a means to contest certain engrained

ideologies of power by appropriating historical information, contextualising it and

placing it within a social frame. Roy, however has taken a more postmodern

interpretation of the novel form to reveal the meta-textuality of ‘history’ as a localised

social construct. She is using the depiction of her characters and their experience of

‘history’ as the key focal point for her readers. For example: As Chacko teaches both

Tristan Keeble 11

Estha and Rahel about their own history, the reader experiences a ‘history’ that is a

darkened yet also farcical interpretation of their situation:

The History House. [Chacko:] ‘With cool stone floors and dim walls and billowing ship-shape windows. And when we look in through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try and listen, all we hear is a whispering. And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by a war. A war that we have won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.’ ‘Marry our conquerors, is more like it,’ Ammu said drily, referring to Margaret Kochamma. Chacko ignored her. He made the twins look up Despise. It said: to look down upon; to view with contempt; to scorn or disdain. Chacko said that it was the context of the war that he was talking about – the War of Dreams –Despise meant all of those things. ‘We’re prisoners of War,’ Chacko said…. When he was in this sort of mood, Chacko used his Reading Aloud voice. His room had a church feeling. He didn’t care whether anyone was listening to him or not…. Ammu called them his Oxford Moods… While other children of their age learned other things, Estha and Rahel learned how history negotiates its terms and collects its dues from those who break its laws. They heard its sickening thud. They smelled its smell and never forgot it. History’s smell. Like old roses on a breeze. It would lurk for ever in ordinary things. In coat hangers. Tomatoes. In the tar on the roads. In certain colours. In the plates at a restaurant. In the absence of words. And the emptiness in eyes. (p.53-55)

In the above extract from The God of Small Things Roy deconstructs the darkness

of history by placing it in the frame of a family relationship. Chacko is an Oxford scholar

and as a result has learned to respect the power engrained in the notion of historical fact.

By translating the dark experience of history as a lost ‘war’ into the fragile, ‘pre-political’

minds of Estha and Rahel they experience history through their visceral imagination,

Tristan Keeble 12

formed not reference to historical events but to the world around them. ‘History’ as an

experience therefore darkens their interpretation of their surroundings and becomes the

overriding signifier for their experience of everyday objects.

Roy’s use of the meta-textuality of history has a definite resonance with

postcolonial theory, specifically in the ethics of re-invigorating old references to loss and

degradation. She implies that the re-invigoration of history would only result in what

Benita Parry describes as ‘post-mortem theory’ [(2002, 86)]. It is also useful to note that

Roy’s critique of the psychology of history has a fundamental impact it has on how we

interpret our surroundings. (This concept this will be discussed below in chapter 2).

Epistemic violence

A further postcolonial trope in Roy’s novel is the notion of epistemic violence. It is no

secret that during the colonial period scientific objectivism and the desire for

classification was responsible for a great deal of racial dehumanisation as Western

scholarly institutions sought to map human history to claim to scholarly esteem. In terms

of postcolonial fiction, this trope of the colonial bone collector has certainly offered a

great deal of currency in a number of other novels. Roy, however, takes a more

politicised approach with regards to the effects of colonial epistemology, evident within

the following extract from the novel:

Pappachi had been an Imperial Entomologist at the Pusa Institute. After Independence, when the British left, his designation was changed from Imperial Entomologist to Joint Director, Entomology. The year he retired he had risen to the rank equivalent to director. His life’s greatest setback was not having had the moth that he had discovered named after him… In the years to come, even though he had been ill-humoured long before he discovered the moth, Pappachi’s Moth was held responsible for his black moods and sudden bouts of temper. It’s pernicious ghost – grey, furry and with unusually dense dorsal tufts – haunted every house that he ever lived in. It tormented him and his children. (p.49)

Tristan Keeble 13

Here, Roy is showing how Western scholarly institutions have created their own

form of ‘epistemic violence’ by appropriating what Bhaba earlier referred to as the

‘power knowledge equation’. Pappachi’s moth is the allegorical representation of

expropriated knowledge, whereby the colonial institution has denied him recognition for

his own discoveries and thus the primacy of his own episteme as ‘advanced’ knowledge.

Enrique Galvan-Alvarez explains further:

Epistemic violence, that is, violence exerted against or through knowledge, is probably one of the key elements in any process of domination. It is not only through the construction of exploitative economic links or the control of the politico-military apparatuses that domination is accomplished, but also and, I would argue, most importantly through the construction of epistemic frameworks that legitimise and enshrine those practices of domination [(2010, 11–26)].

Pappachi’s Moth thereby reinforces the idea that Western institutions legitimized

their authority through retaining control over claims to knowledge. With reference to the

principles of globalization mentioned in the introduction, this epistemological control is

also used to legitimize the Eurocentric state as superior in civility and modernity, thereby

deeming the non-Eurocentric World as, in the words of Alex Tickell, the: ‘Belated

Enlightenment subject’ [(2006)]. Aijaz Ahmad demonstrates, in his text In Theory

(1992), that there are several problems in the categorization of the so-called modern and

pre-modern civilization that have occurred as a result of Western classifications:

This classification leaves the so-called Third World in limbo; if only the First World is capitalist and the Second World socialist, how does one understand the Third World? Is it pre-capitalist? Transitional? Transitional between what and what? But then there is also the issue of the location of particular countries within the various ‘worlds. [(1992, 100)]

Therefore the supposed values that affirm the notion of modernity are constructed

through a Westernised institutional frame but considered to be the definitive and

Tristan Keeble 14

universally aspirant values in the global materiality of life. According to Ahmad this

designation of being neither modern nor un-modern is, for those who are not subjects of

the modernized Eurocentric life, a state of transience - of forever being in transition

because of the greater power structures that maintain Western supremacy and

domination. Pappachi’s moth therefore becomes a powerful anthropomorphised entity

throughout the novel – Roy’s ‘pernicious ghost’ (p.49) that creates fear in Rahel and

causes Pappachi’s devastating anger.

Tristan Keeble 15

Chapter 2: The significance of

objects in Roy’s fiction

Modern Western neo-capitalism seeks, in its most basic form, to turn the world into a

homogenous cosmopolitan, consumer-based society through ever greater technological

developments in production. As an example of a strange object relationship that has

occurred as a result of tis quest for consumer modernity is the story of Dr Verghese

Kurien, the man who transformed India into the world’s largest producer of milk - his

‘operation flood’. Kurien stated on his ninetieth birthday that he hated the very thing he

was celebrated for producing: ‘I don’t drink milk, I don’t like it’ [(Accessed: March 12th

2012)]. For Kurien it is safe to say his milk empire was built on an emancipatory vision

for India - from the industrial supremacy of the West - by converting a surplus Indian

product into and object of Indian national trade. This surplus product, therefore, provides

Industrial agency for the collective ‘nation’ of India across the globe, thereby contesting

the Western notion that India is materially incapable of running its own affairs.

It is no surprise, therefore, that a character called Dr Verghese Verghese appears

in Roy’s novel as a non-existent entity. Roy’s anti-capitalist, anti-nationalist and anti-

industrialist sentiment is mirrored in her treating of Dr Verghese not as a contributor to

emancipation but as an idolised and soothing collaborator with the West in spreading

industrial globalisation. Her anarchic sentiment is fuelled by such events as the Union

Carbide disaster in Bhopal - an event that seemingly appears in the life of Roy’s character

Ammu the subaltern mother, who dies the same death as many of the Bhopal victims.

Roy’s commentary on Kurien’s contribution to a form of conditional emancipation

distinctly mirrors Franz Fanon’s words in The Wretched of Earth that: ‘The apotheosis of

independence is transformed into the curse of independence, and the colonial power

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through its immense resources of coercion condemns the young nation to regression’

[(1963, 78-79)].

In terms of Roy’s characters, this state of industrial retrogression is identical to

Pappachi’s moth in that the Western industrial complex asserts the same divisions

through classification as ‘modern’ and ‘developing’. Pappachi’s moth is therefore also

symbolic of the damage caused by such patriarchal politics, as all other characters

become subject to ideological competition and are enlisted into an ‘immense effort’

[Fanon(1963, 78-79)] to compete with the West. This ‘immense effort’, created by that

‘pernicious ghost’, results in a great fracture in social identities and becomes the

overriding societal objective – resulting in the immense poverty for the toiling work

force.

Turning now to the relationship between the subject and object in Roy’s novel

with a view to interpreting and revealing those engrained ideologies that legitimise power

over the powerless in a state-sanctioned competition of values. Analysis will cover the

topics of: The political object, temporal object and feminine object. The objective here is

to identify a means of recognising the subaltern and to discuss how his/her emancipation

is undone by Western politics and the Western institutions as much as his/her caste

designation.

In The God of Small Things Roy also demonstrates how the object/subject divide

in the global consciousness is not as clear cut as, say, the difference between animate and

inanimate. The question is therefore: can these objects speak for her characters? And if

so, what would they say about the world in which they exist?

A thorough analysis the ‘object’ in Roy’s novel requires a number of functional

definitions as a starting point: According to the Oxford English Dictionary for Students

(2006) an ‘object’ is defined as:

A physical thing that can be seen or touched… A person or thing to which an action or feeling is directed: he hated being the object of public attention… A goal or purpose: the object of his exercise was to shock the audience. [(2006, 698)].

Tristan Keeble 17

If we consider therefore that objects are tangible entities onto which we can

imprint our own cognitions or feelings it becomes clear that the characters in Roy’s

fiction might have a presence and identity, merely as a result their own interaction with

specific objects. In fact they are realised through a unique human trait in coming to know

the self through objects - as revealed by Mikhali Csikszentmihalyi:

Yet the impact of inanimate objects in this self-awareness process is much more important than one would infer from its neglect. Things also tell us about who we are, not in words, but by embodying our intentions. In our everyday traffic of existence, we can also learn about ourselves from objects, almost as much as from people. [(1981, 91)] Roy’s objects therefore become allegorical representations of emotions, cultural

allegiances, mythical stories and signifiers of material-based capital. Throughout her

novel, Roy then re-connects the symbolism ingrained in objects by showing what they

mean to each of her characters and subsequently to society as a whole. In this way the

objects simultaneously become a voice for her characters, as a means of expressing and

deconstructing certain socially-ingrained ideologies.

The political object

What of the political nature imparted to objects in The God of Small Things? Most objects

exist in some form of politicised context, however, it is also possible for ideological

symbols to be translated into objects of collective political thought. A further quote from

Mikhali Cziksentmihalyi demonstrates what constitutes a politicised ‘object’:

All symbols of social integration however, can also act as signs of the opposite process, namely social differentiation and opposition. The cross is a concrete expression of the unity of all Christians, but it also underlines the separation between the latter and the followers of Islam or any other religion. The American flag commands the allegiance of U.S citizens, but it excludes other nationals from the community [(1981, 36)].

Tristan Keeble 18

The politicised symbol is therefore the ‘object’ that unites its constituent members

as the focal point of their political allegiance and consciousness, simultaneously

becoming a method of excluding those not engaged in that brand of collective idealism or

even nationalism. In terms of Roy’s critique of power, the flag is represented as the most

reviled symbolic object because of its capacity to assert power over the powerless on a

totalitarian scale. Roy’s portrayal of the ‘symbolic violence’ of a flag is demonstrated

when the Skyblue Plymouth motorcar is caught up in a communist march. Trapped inside

the vehicle a flag, presumably bearing the hammer and sickle, is thrust into Baby

Kochamma’s face and she is forced to recite communist slogans.

As the most middle-class and Christian character of the novel, Baby Kochamma

therefore reinforces her identity and political allegiance to Christianity against

communism by inserting her rosary beads into her blouse. Her reaction is testament to

how much the communists represent a significant threat to her position - as Roy states in

the novel: ‘In Kerala the Syrian Christians were, by and large, the wealthy, estate owning

(pickle-factory-running) feudal lords, for whom communism represented a fate worse

than death’ (p.66). Baby Kochamma is, therefore, is also reaffirming her own connection

to traditional values that maintain her status within the bourgeoisie, through her symbolic

act.

This is the point in the novel where Rahel sees the subaltern ‘untouchable’

Velutha has joined the crowd of communist demonstrators. He is evidently trying to share

allegiances between his Syrian Christian employers (the Kochammas) and the communist

party. In placing Velutha amongst the communist marchers, Roy is showing how the

caste system prevents social mobility, as Velutha is so obviously out of place anywhere

other than in his employment with the Kochammas. For Velutha, the search for political

agency is a desperate one and indicative of his desire to elevate himself from the

oppressions of his lower caste. Roy also mentions that his emancipation by the Syrian

Christians meant that they paid the price by losing their identity within the Hindu

dominant caste system. For Velutha the flag represents an instrument, whether safe or

not, for obtaining social capital, or as Bourdieu puts it in notion of capital: ‘Any resource

Tristan Keeble 19

effective in a given social arena that enables one to appropriate the specific profits arising

out of participation and contest in it’ [Wacquant (2008, 268)]. So, in essence, the flag is

indicative of both Velutha’s low social status as well as his failure to make external

allegiances but also represents his role as a political instrument.

For Bourdieu there is, however, always the pre-supposition that social mobility is

flexible and all social systems are penetrable. This viewpoint is revealed as distinctly

Eurocentric as the subaltern Paravans are, however, annexed from any form of social

agency as a result of the caste system. According to Gayatri Spivak: ‘[The] ‘new

subaltern’ subject… is unable to join or be represented in the new global order…

‘Subaltern’ came to mean persons and groups cut off from upward – and, in a sense,

‘outward’ social mobility ’ [(39-55)]. So as ‘objects’ they become the societal other upon

whom is imprinted all of society’s ills. Their physical state therefore exists as anterior to

the existence of society, they are therefore subalterns in a subservient and capital-less

state. This is why they are easily appropriated for political means other than their own

emancipation by political groups such as the communists and nationalists.

The temporal object

Moving on to the significance temporal object in The God of Small Things: Rahel’s watch

always reads ten-to-two to demonstrate how the notion of linear-time and modernity have

helped to constructed the fiction of the backward postcolonial subject or what Alex

Tickell has called: ‘The belated Enlightenment subject’ [(2006, 66)]. In so doing, Roy is

critiquing the notion of modernity, especially the major thrust behind globalization is the

attempt to bring the supposedly backward ‘Third World’ up to date.

Roy similarly presents symbols of Western modernity as decaying artifacts of a

western presence. The Skyblue Plymouth, a symbol of industrial supremacy, is left to

sink into the ground outside the house. Both Rahel’s watch and the Skyblue Plymouth

become postcolonial ‘objects’ of thought and resistance because their meaning is altered

to reveal the perspective of the external, non-Eurocentric subject.

Tristan Keeble 20

Rahel’s watch also represents the kind of temporal inertia mentioned earlier,

where time is spent in continual transition between First and Third World. Here, Said

offers further insight into the notion of the belated non-Eurocentric subject - that it only

represents a material condition in the eyes of the West: ‘The Orient is an idea that has a

history and a tradition of thought, imagery and vocabulary that have given it reality and

presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent

reflect each other’ [(2003, 5)]. The ‘Orientalised’ Third World exists therefore as a

remote ‘object’ of knowledge for the West in the global world view. Through this limited

World perspective, the subaltern becomes invisible to the Western institution for reasons

such as those provided by Gayatri Spivak below:

The issue is the difference between dieting and starving, when the dieter’s episteme is produced by a system that produces the starver’s starvation... and [also] punishing those for not having followed patenting laws in their subaltern past and thus having put up ‘illegal trade barriers’ [(2008, 232)].

Spivak is referring to how the subaltern is portrayed by local systems of

government and scholarly research. A patriarchal system that continues to engage in

metaphorical dieting in order to compete with the West is also the system that keeps the

subaltern hungry and subservient. Velutha’s troubled allegiances are such that he is

considered to have erected an ‘illegal trade barrier’ by associating with the Syrian

Christian system and thus being non-complicit with the Hindu caste controls. In terms of

globalization, the institutional system that, therefore, portrays his material condition to

the outside world is the same institution that denies him any freedom.

Spivak also suggests that the subalterns are cut off from ‘the lines that produced

the colonial mindset’ [(2008, 232)]. They are therefore not even on the periphery of

colonial knowledge. They are therefore denied any form of political agency either within

or outside of India. This disconnect, however, is considered by Spivak to actually offer a

significant benefit to the re-invigoration of the pre-colonial perspective a - point will be

discussed later in this chapter.

Tristan Keeble 21

The female object

As far as the feminine object in Roy’s fiction is concerned: She seeks to bring the female

frame centre stage, but also to reveal the degrading effect of female objectification at a

localized level. There is another aspect of the feminine object that is particularly relevant

in the postcolonial context, as Dorit Naaman elaborates:

Postcolonial discourse often compares patriarchy with colonial power, the imperial gaze with the male objectifying gaze. The colonized nation is thus compared to a woman, not quite an independent subject; the bearer, not maker of her own meaning. [(2000, 333-342)]

Naaman is highlighting the difficulty of constructing the feminine object when it

is already subsumed by patriarchal objectification. Naaman’s view is mirrored by that of

Elleke Boehmer’s words: ‘The majority of postcolonial writers are read with reference to

a national matrix’ [(2011, pp.170-81)], however, the more pertinent point is that the

female subject - as much as the postcolonial state - is said to be incapable of being ‘the

maker of her own meaning’.

In The God of Small Things, Roy likewise shows the difficulty for a female

subject to become the possessor of her own will and maker of her own meaning when she

is being objectified: Mammachi is the object of Pappachi’s thoughts and feelings. She is

the outlet for his grief and alcoholism and his material-based capital to him when he

demands that she sleep with the tea plantation owner to save Pappachi’s job. When

Chacko’s overturns Pappachi’s imprinted objectification of Mammachi, Pappachi vents

his frustrationon on the next lowest and more inanimate object – the chair. Furthermore in

Mammachi’s objectified state her only ‘object’ of resistance is a vase which she uses to

beat-back Pappachi’s aggression, thereby ddestroying her own domestic sphere.

Tristan Keeble 22

Roy’s critique of the female object goes one step further, specifically in reference

to notion of female ownership - or lack thereof. Once Mammachi’s cottage industry

becomes “Paradise Pickles”, it mirrors Verghese’s milk empire or ‘Project Flood’ – an

industry that has been ideologically appropriated for a competition with Western

supremacy by a patriarchal regime. Mammachi’s pickle business therefore only acquires

its commercial identity as a result of being branded by the male characters. This

commercial appropriation of both value and meaning is legitimized by Mammachi’s

status as ‘non locus standi’ (or without sufficient claim to the business because of her

gender). As a result of this male appropriation, the business is subsequently sold for

credit.

Mammachi’s predicament therefore is indicative of Spivak’s notion of ‘credit-

baiting’ [()] whereby ownership is squeezed from the hands of localized labour in

exchange for the ideologically founded acquisition of global capital. Jean Baudrillard

explains why this process of Westernised credit accumulation is so socially reductive:

In sum, credit pretends to promote a civilisation of modern consumers at last freed from the constraints of property, but in reality it institutes a whole system integration which combines social mythology with brutal economic pressure. [(1996, 162)]

The key element here is that the women of Kerala are excluded from even

entering into the credit-based economy, thereby having no ability to construct their own

objects of resistance outside of an ideological competition with the West. Mammachi’s

situation demonstrates that ownership is very much a source of agency - her localized

business is an ‘object’ of female presence and position as well as a means of creating

meaning through social interaction, without which Mammachi becomes objectified

capital for the means of economic exploitation and thus subject to both ‘social

mythology’ and ‘brutal economic pressure’.

Mammachi’s action of destroying her vase is also indicative of Jean Baudrillard’s

concept that: ‘By means of credit... domesticity is directly colonized’ [(1996, 162)].

Tristan Keeble 23

Antonia Navaro-Tejero expands on this point by relating Roy’s female characters to the

lower caste Dalits:

Roy equates Dalit’s and women’s labour to capital in the sense that they help in the increase of capital, either by getting lower wages, by serving as a political instrument, and by being used for sexual favours [(2006, 104)].

Navarro-Tejero’s point highlights the difficulty for both women and the

‘untouchable’ subalterns to accumulate personal capital outside the patriarchal social

system. However, Gayatri Spivak presents the case for the subalterns perhaps being a

valuable source of knowledge that might provide some form of a solution to the dilemma

of fractured global identities:

First, the relatively homogenous dominant Hindu culture at the village level keeps the ST [subaltern] materially isolated through prejudice. Second, as a result of this material isolation, women’s independence among the STs, in their daily in-house behaviour (‘ontic dom’) has remained intact. It has not been infected by the tradition of women’s oppression within the general culture. [(2008, 229-240)]

However, a further interesting question is posed by both Roy and Spivak: Is there

any reason they say, to ‘educate’ the subaltern into a modernised society considering they

might offer the greatest opportunity to invigorate a ‘pre-colonial’, pre-nationalised’ and

‘pre-globalised’ mindset? Spivak also suggests that the subaltern social system is worth

learning from as ‘it has not been affected by the tradition of women’s oppression within

the general culture’. In Roy’s novel, the Paravan characters are effeminized to represent

their connection to being objectified individuals – Velutha’s painted fingernails for

example.

Roy’s reverence for the subaltern perspective is represented both through

Velutha’s repairing of the boat as well as his glass eye. Roy resurrects the cultural

Tristan Keeble 24

presence of lower caste Paravans by elevating their abilities to fashion the world of their

surroundings into objects of emancipation. Velutha is revealed as the character of the title

– ‘The God of Small Things’ with his ‘Lucky leaf that makes the monsoons come on

time’ (p.70). He is also shown as having mythical significance in the lives of both Estha

and Rahel as he is depicted in terms of Westernised Christian ideals, such as the Christ–

like reference to his carpentry as well as the Germanic reference to his leaf – as in the

story of Siegfried. His father Vellya Paapen is treated with similar mythological

symbolism - see his Greco-Roman reference to Tiresius the blind seer from the story of

Oedipus.

Roy’s elevating of the non-metropolitan subalterns through their ability to fashion

the world around them is indicative of, according to Devon Campbell Hall: [Roy’s]

privileging of skilled labour, thereby helping to undermine the unquestioned acceptance

in the West of the need for dehumanizing globalised production methods’ [(2006, 52)].

Roy is clearly enamoured with the subaltern’s artisanal abilities and seeks to

communicate the importance of their pre-colonial society to the anti-globalisation

movement within Eurocentric circles by depicting the subalterns through the imagery of

Western mythology. It should be noted the subalterns are also materially disconnected

from the West and therefore free from that ‘colonized’ gaze, as mentioned in chapter 1.

Tristan Keeble 25

Chapter 3: Arundhati Roy’s novel as a

dissident narrative

Edward Said stated that the novel in its contemporary form provides an effective means

of, not only disseminating alternative perspectives but providing and ‘affective’ means of

interrogating the lived social ‘space’ of a society. This chapter discusses Arundhati Roy’s

novel as an intentionally political ‘intervention’ through analysis of resistance to power

both within and outside her text. The initial hypothesis for this chapter is that Roy’s

narrative functions to appropriate language so as to make it accessible to the polyglocy of

non-Eurocentric subjects. Through her imagery she reveals how the middle classes are

incapable of rationalising effective solutions to support the subalterns of society as they

are disconnected from the plight of the subaltern through their reliance on media

constructed images. Finally, the external reception Roy’s received is assessed in order to

present a series of revealing insights into her agenda.

So what then is intrinsically anarchic within the text itself?. Her focus on the

contemporary issues reveals the impact on the various residents of Kerala of a ‘foreign’

education, religious subjectivity, Americanised media, the apparent freedoms offered by

Communism as well as a growing dissonance with the natural world after the plague of

industry.

Roy’s dissident language

In narrative style terms, Roy’s use of language is deliberate in the sense that she

deconstructs the canonised form of colonial English. In this regard, her stylised language

reflects a form of post-imperial resistance mentioned in both; the earlier quote from Bill

Ashcroft and in Stan Smith’s essay ‘Darkening English: Post-imperial Contestations in

the Language of Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott’ [(1994, pp. 39-55)] where he states:

Tristan Keeble 26

Though ‘light on the tongue’, this language is darkened by a history of oppression. It enshrines in its very verbal structures the struggle of opposing allegiances…It has recorded, too, the struggle to re-appropriate, make over, that language into an instrument of liberation which puts the postcolonial writer back into the saddle of the high horse of English. [(1994, pp. 39-55)]

In Smith’s terms, Roy’s language is ‘light on the tongue’ because of its playful

anti-capitalist neologisms, language musing and ‘chutnified’ [Tickell (2006, 60)]

rhythmic prose. Her ‘whimsical prose’ does, however, always have a darker and more

politicised context when seen in relation to power structures within the novel. Examples

from the text include:

‘Coca-ColaFanta? IcecreamRosemilk?’ (p.109) ‘Her hair Was the delicate colourov Gi-nnn-ger (leftleft, right) There was a girl Margaret Kochamma told her to Stoppit. So she Stoppited.’ (p.141).

Roy also makes it clear that the language she re-appropriates is the orthodox

English of a colonial Christian education, learned not as a creolized hybrid of English but

via enforced indoctrination through repetition of a canonised lexicon. As an act of

resistance, Roy deconstructs this ‘learned’ English by continually repeating stereotypical

colonial-isms. Her act of repetition is a form of semantic satiation, whereby words lose

their specific meaning though being mulled-over and de-contextualised.

Roy therefore shifts colonial English into a malleable form, accessible to the

polyglocy of colonised cultural expression by deconstructing the signified untouchability

of the language. In the words of Nien-Ming Chien: ‘Roy’s anarchic writing repositions

English from “colonialist” origins to nativist self expression’ [(2004, 158)]. The

following example of Roy’s anarchic prose in her novel demonstrates her ability to re-

Tristan Keeble 27

appropriate language both as a deliberate act by her characters as well as a functioning

narrative for her readers:

Whenever she caught them speaking in Mayalam, she [Margaret Kochamma] levied a small fine which was deducted at source. From their pocket money. She made them write lines – ‘impositions’ she called them – I will always speak in English, I will always speak in English. A hundred times each. When they were done, she scored them out with her red pen to make sure that the old lines were not recycled for new punishments. She had made them practice and English car song for the way back. They had to form words properly, and be particularly careful about their pronunciation. Prer Nun Sea ayshun. Rej-Oice in the Lo-Ord Or-Orlways And again I say rej-Oice, RejOice, RejOice, And again I say rej-Oice. (p.36)

There is, however, a small caveate regarding Smith’s earlier statement that: ‘It has

recorded, too, the struggle to re-appropriate, make over, that language into an ‘instrument

of liberation’ [(1994, pp. 39-55)]. As, in The God of Small Things, Roy struggles with –

and is ambivalent to - the use of English as an instrument of liberation for the

postcolonial subject. As a result she has even tried to have her novel translated into

Mayalayam, which had a mixed reception.

She also reveals how cultural hegemony can be contained not only within a

language but also within its teaching process. If English is, and always will be, the

language of the coloniser then the use of English will continually re-affirm the global

subject’s complicity with a central Metropolitan, Eurocentric nucleus of power.

According to Smith: ‘The language of English is darkened by a corrupting political

complicity, and the poet of a subject people cannot use it without being compromised and

co-opted’ [(1994, pp. 39-55)].

By juxtaposing Smith’s statement with Arundhati Roy’s statement that: ‘the only

thing worth Globalising is dissent’ [(Accessed: may 3rd 2012)] it becomes clear that her

Tristan Keeble 28

dissent is also focussed on the politics of artistic representation. As Roy states: ‘When

independent, thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to

rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film… blindly yoke their art to the

service of the 'nation', it's time for all of us to sit up and worry’ [(Accessed: may 3rd

2012)]. This would suggest that her anarchic use of English is in fact in creating a

universally dissident expression of English that remains free from the suppression of state

control. In doing so she resists the kind of artistic complicity that Bourdieu mentions in

his text Distinction: A social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979), described by Loic

Wacquant as:

To appreciate a painting, a poem or a symphony pre-supposes mastery of the specialized symbolic code of which it is a materialization, which in turn requires possession of the proper kind of cultural capital. Mastery of this code can be acquired can be acquired by osmosis in one’s milieu of origin or by explicit teaching [(2008, 270)].

Wacquant’s précis of Bourdieu’s theory presents an interesting observation as, in

the postcolonial context of Roy’s work, that ‘proper kind of cultural capital’ is a result of

enforced hegemony in India after colonialism. For Roy, the mastery of a ‘specialised

symbolic code’ is her capacity for interpreting and reinscribing the symbolic dominance

of Western cultural hegemony through her re-appropriation and hybridization of the

English language. In this respect, her ‘milieu of origin’ can be situated as once complicit

student of Anglophilia who is in turn now an acting postcolonial dissident.

In terms of globalisation, Roy’s critique also extends to Americanised imperialism

that seeks to convert those technologically connected to Western media into consumers of

Western ideals. A major theme of The God of Small Things is the disparity between the

external and the internal, between the local and the outside world. Within this

metaphorical disjuncture she demonstrates the difficulty in combining the politics of the

external nationalised and globalised world with the everyday experiences of those caught

up in the politics of expanding associations. Within these associations - powerful

Tristan Keeble 29

ideological connections, mediated through universalised imagery - the local becomes

complicit with a strange form of global, neither of which appear to fit with the other.

As an example of Roy’s critique of technology that creates global universality,

she focuses heavily on the effect of TV mediated images on the life of Baby Kochamma,

evident within the following quote from the book:

The sky was thick with TV. If you wore special glasses you could see them spinning through the sky among the bats and homing birds – blondes, wars, famines, football, food shows, coups d’etat, hairstyles stiff with hairspray. Designer pectorals, Gliding towards Ayemenem like like Skydivers. Making patterns in the sky. Wheels. Windmills. Flowers blooming and unblooming. (P.188) She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine and genocide as direct threats to her furniture. (p.28)

Here, Roy’s imagery doubly re-enforces the unreality of not just television but

also the televised event as a source of valid information concerning the ‘reality’ of the

world beyond of the local. Whilst Baby Kochamma is complicit in this unreality of

television she can only contextualise her experience of these images through her own

surroundings - farcically relating the images of genocide to a direct attack on her own

furniture. In this process the viewer experiences the need to take sides in a supposedly

imaginary battle, or align themselves with a supposedly important ideal. Baby

Kochamma’s fear for her furniture is therefore a metaphor for the blind materialism of

the western middle-class consumer conscious. Baby Kochamma as a character represents

that middle-class dissonance with the world outside of the media, a world where the

subaltern remains oppressed and invisible.

Roy’s use of imagery highlights Baudrillard’s concept of ‘hyperreality’ whereby

the simulated experience of the world through television is used to enlist and co-opt

people into experiencing an individualised connection to world politics, nationalism and a

collective conscious - contextualised through a localised reference of Baby Kochamma’s

domestic frame:

Tristan Keeble 30

Events lose their identity and fade into hyperreality… In this sense, while televisual information claims to provide immediate access to real events, in fact what it does is to ‘inform’ public opinion which in turn affects the course of subsequent events, both real and informational. As consumers of mass media, we [the Western consumer] never experience the bare material event but only the informational coating that renders it ‘sticky and unintelligible’ [Zurbrugg (1997, 126)]

Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality demonstrates that same separation of culture

and image that Debord discusses in Chapter 1. However, Baudrillard’s reference is aimed

at the propogandized image that creates a form of complicity with global image and

hence global ideology. By being complicit with this the spectacular imagery of global

media Baby Kochamma, the middle class consumer, is coerced into recognising and thus

legitimizing the ideologies and binarisms of nationhood, Communism, Americanism or

religious subjectivity through what Homi K. Bhaba describes as the ‘metaphoricity’

[(1994, 34)] of power. This mediated power has resulted in what Franz Fanon describes

as: the historical result of the incapacity of the national middle class to rationalize popular

action, that is to say their incapacity to see into the reasons for that action’ [(1963, 119)].

In the context of emancipating the subaltern, it is clear that, as with the Western

Episteme, the subaltern does not feature as part of this politicised global imagery and is

therefore non-existent in the life of Baby Kochamma as a result.

Finally, Roy’s postmodern non-linear narrative is structured to specifically reflect

the impact of dominance over the life-span of her characters but without reference to a

clear time frame. The effect of which, as a reading experience, is intended to separate the

relationship between text and author whereby the reader is forced to construct their own

version of events. According to Madhu Benoit, in her narratological analysis of Roy’s

novel ‘Circular Time: A study of Narrative Techniques in Arundhati Roy’s The God of

Small Things’:

The novel’s fragmentary form both softens and highlights the violent contours of Roy’s Roman a these. Her deconstructionist tactics force

Tristan Keeble 31

the reader to fit the kaleidoscopic pieces together into some sort of coherent “whole” [(2006, 85)].

By fitting the kaleidoscopic pieces together the reader is therefore forced into

intentionally constructing a version of events that are most applicable to their own

‘imaginative’ perception. Benoit goes even further explaining that as a result: ‘Reading

becomes an act of composition as the reader “writes” the text through the prism of her/his

imaginative perception of the deconstructed doxa’ [(2006, 85)]. By considering Roy’s

novel as an intervention, that doxa (presumed knowledge) is deconstructed by the reader

as part of their own narrativising of events. The big question therefore, is what doxas is

Roy deconstructing through her narrative? Which in turn brings us to the question of

Roy’s text as an intervention in the external world.

Roy’s text as an intervention in the external world

Bearing in mind that Roy’s readership would inevitably consist of Westernised middle-

class individuals, especially after receiving the Booker prize for literature, it doesn’t take

a great stretch of the imagination to believe that these were the targets of her anarchic

narrative. Her novel, therefore, could be considered a Trojan horse - celebrated by the

book-consuming Western middle-classes as well as Western literary institutions for her

peculiarly entertaining prose whilst simultaneously admitting to their own complicity in

creating the plight of Roy’s characters – all tropes of people existing somewhere in the

‘real’ world outside of the novel. Julie Mullaney explains how this perception of Roy’s

novel would fit with Graham Huggan’s critique in ‘The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing

the margins’ (2001):

Huggan is more disposed to read the “ironizing” of a currency of nostalgic images” in the novel as a “strategic exoticism, designed to trap the unwary reader into complicity with the Orientalisms of which the novel so hauntingly relates” (my italics) or a “meta-exoticism”, in the mould of Rushdie, “laying bare the ground of its own material production” [(2006, 113)].

Tristan Keeble 32

Taking on board Huggan’s argument it could also be said that Roy’s novel

assisted in introducing her voice and, therefore, her agenda to the world stage (Keeble

2010). Julie Mullaney goes further by explaining that Roy is not the ‘author’ of her own

‘exoticised’ image and therefore it is an unfair representation of her as an activist-writer

to presume that her image is a tactical construction. However it is worth mentioning that

the audience that she is consumed by are, as mentioned earlier, predominantly a middle-

class.

Huggan’s view is that Roy she wishes to direct her critique towards the

‘Orientalisms’ and westernised media images that are consumed by the national middle

classes. A middle class who, as Stephanie Benzaquen mentions in her essay ‘Postcolonial

aesthetic experience: Thinking in aesthetic categories in the face of catastrophe at the

beginning of the twenty-first century’ (2010): ‘are people who look at actual images of

atrocity via aesthetic references, even possibly as aesthetic experience’ [(Accessed:

November 12th 2011)]. Benzaquen’s words reinforce the notion that the global aesthetic

that connects people to a mediated world view is simultaneously the bind that prevents

any active emancipation or even presence for those suffering the inequalities of

contemporary globalization.

Tristan Keeble 33

Conclusion

One of the most troubling concepts to reach the world stage is this idea that modernity or

progress is aimed towards a state of being governed by a set of definitive values, external

to a localised setting. What Roy makes clear in her novel is that those aspirational

Western values that inform globalisation do in fact result in a fractured connection

between members of society at different levels of periphery to a Eurocentric core. The

colonized mind is therefore an appropriated frame of view which recognises the West as

the centre of both power and knowledge. In order to construct this appropriated gaze, the

Western world, through colonial dominance, has separated localised references to

symbolic cultural connections as well as appropriated world history.

Roy demonstrates the effect of this appropriated gaze on the life of her pre-

political protagonists Estha and Rahel who, as a result, become incapable of creating

sufficient agency even within their own families. Roy also represents history as a

darkened force in the lives of her characters - who symptomatically begin viewing history

as an evil entity pervading their experience of everyday objects and surroundings. Roy

also anthropomorphises the notion of ‘epistemic violence’ into an entity in the form of

Pappachi’s moth, which becomes Rahel’s allegorical experience of fear as well as

Pappachi’s major source of anger.

It is also clear that the political objective at the heart of globalisation is the

industrial competition of the West. The value judgments concerning development and

modernity are seen by Roy as being the result of a pernicious colonial ghost, represented

by Pappachi’s Moth. What also appears from Roy’s narrative is that other forms of

resistance against globalisation from different quarters, specifically communism are a

dubious source of freedom and emancipation from a place that is in a transitional state of

dependence to the West.

By looking at the objects in Roy’s fiction what becomes clear is that both culture

and humanity is being appropriated for an ideological competition of values. The objects

Tristan Keeble 34

of Roy’s novel all have specific resonance to her characters and therefore become

allegorical representation of their emotions, cultural and political allegiances as well as

material based capital. For Roy’s middle-class Christian character Baby Kochamma, her

political allegiance is represented through her rosary which she uses to purge herself of a

communist threat. Velutha, the subaltern Paravan, is however a malleable political

instrument for whoever offers him meagre freedoms and thus becomes a political object

himself.

Rahel’s watch is representative of that ‘belated enlightenment subject’ and

indicative of the state of transition that exists in her world. Finally, Mammachi’s pickle

business represents a source creating meaning for her and her family. As soon as the

business is labelled ‘Paradise Pickles’ both Mammachi and her business are appropriated

for political objectives and thus become ‘objects’ for the accumulation of capital and

credit.

Finally, Roy uses Velutha to demonstrate how those segregated from society

through being lower caste individuals are a vital source of knowledge in the process of

decolonisation. This is because they were invisible to the colonial gaze and therefore the

least effected by the presence of colonialism and thus maintain some vestige of their pre-

colonial social system. They are, however, invisible to the middle-class bourgeoisie as a

result.

Roy’s use of language is fundamentally anarchic as she re-inscribes the canonised

lexicon of colonial English. In so doing she reveals how a language can be appropriated

by the polyglocy of colonial subjects and therefore made accessible as a source of

anarchic dissidence and/or emancipation. Through her use of imagery she also

demonstrates how the unreality of a televised event through global media coerces and co-

opts the middle class into embracing a Eurocentric gaze. Roy also reveals the effect of

this Euro-American-centric gaze has resulted in a distraction as well as an addition to the

plight of the subalterns or as Franz Fanon referred to it: ‘the inability for the national

middle class to rationalise’ any such action as to assist in the emancipation of the

subaltern.

Tristan Keeble 35

Finally, external to Roy’s text, her book consuming public are themselves the

subject of her critique inadvertently. As Huggan has suggested, her exoticised media

image may well contribute to the ‘Orientalisms’ that exist within her text, thereby

‘trapping the unwary reader’ into a self-reflexive experience of recognising their own

complicity with that Eurocentric gaze.

Tristan Keeble 36

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