IIAS Research

The Newsletter | No.56 | Spring 201138 | The Network

The Ring of Recollection

Transgenerational Haunting in the Novels of

Shashi Deshpande Nancy Ellen Batty

Foreword by Jasbir Jain

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In The Ring of Recollection, Nancy Batty challenges the critical orthodoxy that Shashi Deshpande’s fi ction is transparently realistic and narrowly focused on domestic and women’s issues. This study shifts attention towards the labyrinthine structure and modernist style of most of Deshpande’s writing. Features hitherto viewed as deviations from her realism, or even as fl aws, are re-situated in the light of a gothic poetics that works to uncover a structural trope of transgenerational secrecy, beginning with Deshpande’s early detective fi ction and extending to her most recent work.

Linking a fourth-century Sanskrit play by Kalidasa (Shakuntala) and the psychoanalytic theories of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, Batty offers in-depth

reinterpretations of fi ve of Deshpande’s major novels, published over a period of twenty years (1980–2000): The Dark Holds No Terrors; That Long Silence; The Binding Vine; A Matter of Time; and Small Remedies. These novels have established Deshpande’s critical reputation as a ‘woman’s’ writer whose major concern is to break the “long silence” of Indian women. Batty shifts the ground of analysis by establishing that Deshpande’s fi ctional world encompasses more than just female characters, and that the trope of silence extends not only to her male characters but also to communities, in a society where silence about shameful past events can control the destinies of entire families. Thus we see in her novels characters whose lives are disturbed, haunted, and sometimes even controlled not just by traumatic events but also by transgenerational family secrets to which they often do not have access. Moreover, the breaking of silence – the revelatory opening of family crypts – can have devastating consequences. Restoration of memory may have the power to reorganize the past and change the future, but it rarely possesses the magic required to reunite lovers or to restore wholeness to shattered lives.

The Ring of Recollection offers a major reappraisal of one of India’s most prolifi c and respected contemporary writers.

Amsterdam/New York, NY 2010. XLII, 305 pp.

(Cross/Cultures 126)Bound €70,-/US$98,-

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Programmes

IIAS CeNTRe foR RegulATIoN ANd goveRNANCeThe IIAS Centre for Regulation and governance in Asia, is engaged in innovative and comparative research on theories and practices and focusing on emerging markets of Asia. The Centre serves as a focal point of collaborative research between european and Asian scholars. Its multidisciplinary research undertakings combine approaches from political economy, law, public administration, crimi-nology, and sociology in the comparative analysis of regulatory issues in Asia and in developing theories of governance pertinent to Asian realities. Currently the Centre facilitates projects on State licensing, Market Closure, and Rent Seeking; Regulation of Intra-governmental Conflict; Social Costs, externalities and Innovation; Regulatory governance under Institutional void; and governance in Areas of Contested Territoriality and Sovereignty. Coordinator: Tak-Wing Ngot.w.ngo@hum.leidenuniv.nl

SCIeNCe ANd HISToRy IN ASIAThe complex links between science and history in Asian civilisations can be studied on at least two levels. first, one can focus on the ways in which the actors have perceived those links; how, on the one hand, they have used disciplines that we now categorise as sciences, such as astronomy, for a better understanding of their own past; and, on the other hand, how they have constructed the historicity of these disciplines, giving them cultural legitimacy. Secondly, one can reflect on historio-graphical issues related to the sciences. How can the sciences be incorporated into historical narratives of Asian civilisations? This question is crucial, given the dominant 19th and 20th century view that science is a european invention, and that it has somehow failed to develop endogenously in Asia, where ‘traditional science’ is usually taken as opposed to ‘Western’ or ‘modern science’, This project will address various approaches to the issue by organising five inter-national work-shops in Cambridge, leiden and Paris.Sponsored by: NWo Humanities, Needham Research Institute, Recherches epistémologiques et Historiques sur les Sciences exactes et les Insitutions Scientifiques (ReHSeIS) and IIAS.Coordinators: Christopher Cullen (Needham Research Institute) c.cullen@nri.org.uk and Harm Beukers (Scaliger Institute, Leiden University) h.beukers@hum.leidenuniv.nl

geNdeR, MIgRATIoN ANd fAMIly IN eAST ANd SouTHeAST ASIAdeveloped from an earlier research project on ‘Cross-border Marriages’, this project is a compara-tive study on intra-regional flows of migration in east and Southeast Asia with a focus on gender and family. It aims at studying the linkage between immigration regimes, transnational families and migrants’ experiences. The first component of the project looks at the development of the immigration regimes of the newly industrialised countries in east and Southeast Asia. The second component looks at the experiences of female migrants in the context of the first component. To investigate these issues, this project will bring together scholars who have already been working on related topics. A three-year research project is developed with an empirical focus on Taiwan and South Korea as the receiving countries, and vietnam and the PRC as the sending countries.Coordinators: Melody LU (IIAS) m.lu@iias.nl

PlANTS, PeoPle ANd WoRKThis research programme consists of various projects that study the social history of cash crops in Asia (18th to 20th centuries). over the past 500 years europeans have turned into avid consumers of colonial products. Production systems in the Americas, Africa and Asia adapted to serve the new markets that opened up in the wake of the ‘european encounter’. The effects of these transformations for the long-term development of these societies are

fiercely contested. This research programme contributes to the discussion on the histories of globalisation by comparing three important systems of agrarian production over the last 200 years. The individual projects focus on tobacco, sugar, and indigo in India and Indonesia. Institutes involved: university of Amsterdam, International Institute of Social History (IISH, Amsterdam) and IIAS.Coordinators: Willem van Schendel h.w.vanschendel@uva.nl and Marcel van der Linden mvl@iisg.nl

SeNSHI SoSHoThis project, funded and coordinated by the Philippus Corts foundation, aims to translate a maximum of 6 official Japanese publications of the series known as ‘Senshi Sosho’ into the english language. from 1966 until 1980, the Ministry of defense in Tokyo published a series of 102 numbered volumes on the war in Asia and in the Pacific. Around 1985 a few additional unnumbered volumes were published. This project focuses specifically on the 6 volumes of these two series which are relevant to the study of the Japanese attack on and the subsequent occupation of the former dutch east-Indies in the period of 1941 until 1945. Coordinator: Jan Bongenaar iias@iias.nl

ASIA deSIgNThis programme consists of individual projects related to graphic design and architectural design in Asian megacities. Institutes involved: IIAS, Modern East Asia Research Centre (MEARC), Delft School of Design (DSD). Sponsored by: IIAS and Asiascape.

Asia Design: Translating (Japanese) contemporary artTakako Kondo focuses on (re)presentation of ‘Japanese contemporary art’ in art critical and theoretical discourses from the late 1980s in the realms of english and Japanese languages, including artists’ own critical writings. Her research is a subject of (cultural) translation rather than art historical study and she intends to explore the possibility of multiple and subversive reading of ‘Japanese contemporary art’ in order to establish various models for transculturality in contemporary art.Coordinator: Takako Kondo t.kondo@hum.leidenuniv.nl Asia Design: The post colonial global cityThis research examines the postcolonial cities of South, east and South-east Asia, and how some of them have made the successful segue from nodes in formerly colonial networks to global cities in their own right. This is intended to be an inter-disciplinary approach bringing together architects and urbanists, geographers, sociologists and political scientists, as well as historians, linguists and anyone else involved in the field of Asian studies. The research concentrates on cities that have successfully made the transition from colonial to postcolonial nodes in the global network (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai). A key factor in the research is architectural typology. Architecture is examined to see how it can create identity and ethos and how in the postcolonial era these building typologies have been superseded by the office building, the skyscraper and the shopping centre, all of which are rapidly altering the older urban fabric of the city.Coordinator: Greg Brackengregory@cortlever.com

eNeRgy PRogRAMMe ASIA – ePAestablished in September 2007, this programme addresses the domestic and geopolitical aspects of energy security for China and the european union. The geopolitical aspects involve analysing the effects of competition for access to oil and gas resources and the security of energy supply among the main global consumer countries of the eu and China. The domestic aspects involve analysing domestic energy demand and supply, energy efficiency policies, and the deployment of renewable energy resources. Within this programme scholars from the Nether-lands and China will visit each other’s institutes and will jointly publish their research outcomes. Institutes involved: Institute of West Asian and African Studies (IWAAS) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). Sponsored by: KNAW China exchange Programme and IIASCoordinator: Mehdi Parvizi Aminehm.p.amineh@uva.nl

Networks

AgeINg IN ASIA ANd euRoPeduring the 21st century it is projected that there will be more than one billion people aged 60 and over, with this figure climbing to nearly two billion by 2050, three-quarters of whom will live in the developing world. The bulk of the ageing population will reside in Asia. Ageing in Asia is attributable to the marked decline in fertility shown over the last 40 years and the steady increase in life-expectancy. In Western europe, ageing populations developed at a slower pace and could initially be incorporated into welfare policy provisions. Currently governments are seeking ways to trim and reduce government financed social welfare and health-care, including pensions systems, unleashing substantial public debate and insecurity. Many Asian governments are facing comparable challenges and dilemmas,

involving both the state and the family, but are confronted with a much shorter time-span. This research programme, in short, sheds light on how both Asian and european nations are reviewing the social contract with their citizens. Research network involved: Réseau de Recherche Internationale sur l’Age, la Citoyenneté et l’Intégration Socio-économique (ReIACTIS) Sponsored by: IIAS.Coordinator: Carla Risseeuwc.risseeuw@iias.nl

ABIA SouTH ANd SouTHeAST ASIAN ART ANd ARCHAeology INdexThe Annual Bibliography of Indina Archaeology is an annotated biblio-graphic database for publications covering South and Southeast Asian art and archae-ology. The project was launched by IIAS in 1997 and is currently coordinated by the Post-graduate Institute of Archaeology of the university of Kelaniya, Colombo, Sri lanka. The database is freely accessible at www.abia.net. extracts from the database are also available as biblio-graphies, published in a series by Brill. The project receives scientific support from uNeSCo.Coordinators: Ellen Raven and Gerda Theuns-de Boer e.m.raven@iias.nl www.abia.net