Friction in the Fiction | The Translation Trap & The Untamed Vernacular ❤️

Why Does Spivak Prefer Planetarity to Globalisation?

A Birthday Tribute to Anne Frank and Gitanjali Shree

#onherbirthdaytoday

12 June 2026

Today happens to be the birthday of two great writers who are celebrated the world over, thanks mainly to their works being translated into English.

Presenting Anne Frank and Gitanjali Shree, on their birthdays today, ladies and gentlemen.

There are quite a lot of similarities between Anne Frank and Gitanjali Shree, as regards their life and writing.

I am so excited to share yet another fortuitous coincidence here on this blogpost. Ms. Anne Dayanandan, the Founder of Campus School, presented me with Gitanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, three years ago, on this very same date – 12th June 2023! I can’t forget the valuable note that she had written for me, that came along with the book. So happy to present it here, for my dear readers. 

Coming back - 

Both Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl and Gitanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand deal with the impact of 20th-century geopolitical trauma. While Frank’s diary is set against the backdrop of the Holocaust and the violent segregation of European Jews, Shree’s novel, Tomb of Sand (Ret Samadhi), is rooted in the trauma of the 1947 Partition of India.

Both authors have achieved great global recognition through translation. While Frank’s diary (translated from Dutch) became a paradigm for humanism in the face of atrocity, Shree made history by becoming the first author of a Hindi-language novel to win the International Booker Prize.

As a warm-up to today’s post, me thought of recollecting the subtle warning that Spivak gives her readers on the ‘translation trap’ – a purely “market-driven push” for massive anthologies of world literature in translation, labelling it as interpretive violence!

So what is the translation trap?

In her seminal essay, titled, “The Politics of Translation”, Spivak argues that translation is not a neutral linguistic transfer, but a deeply political act tied to power, colonialism, and global capitalism. Hence she warns against the exploitation of “Third World” texts into easily digestible English!

Spivak calls this phenomenon as the “translation trap” - the danger of translating texts from marginalised cultures into English in a way that erases their unique identity just to make them comfortable for Western readers.

The translation “trap” happens when a translator prioritises a “flattening” and “smoothening” of the text to make it easily consumable and digestible in the target language (usually English). Although the goal is often commercial and at times well-intentioned as well, it is indeed a huge injustice for the text in its original, source language, feels Spivak. That’s because, by ironing out the linguistic quirks, cultural idioms, and structural complexities of the original language, the translator strips away the text’s unique “Otherness,” feels Spivak.

So how do we overcome this translation trap?

Globalisation and the market push want translation to be “transparent” - making the text feel as if it were originally written in English, thereby erasing its origins. However, Spivak resists this claim of ‘transparency’. She advocates planetarity (and surrender) as means by which we can overcome the translation trap. This allows the text to remain “opaque”, unique and distinct.

But before we do a Spivakian comparativist study, let’s discuss two key terms propounded by Said and Spivak, that I’m sure will help us skyhigh in our little attempt at comparing Anne Frank with Gitanjali Shree!

Well, Edward Said’s concept of the “worldliness” of a text, I’m sure musta provided the spark for Spivak’s concept of “planetarity.”

In his 1983 book titled, The World, the Text, and the Critic, Said boldly dismantles the “New Critical” illusion that a literary work is a pure, autonomous object existing in a transcendent aesthetic vacuum. Instead, he argues that texts are inherently “worldly” as they are events inextricably tethered to the dirt of history, political power structures, and the specific material circumstances of their creation and reception.

20 years later, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak introduced the concept of “planetarity” in her 2003 book Death of a Discipline as a radical alternative to “globalisation.” (although she had presented the concept much earlier, in the year 1997 in a paper presentation).

To Spivak, globalisation is the imposition of a uniform capitalist framework over the entire world. It exists to make almost everything – including currencies, cultures, literature, and land – quantifiable, measurable, exchangeable, and universally digestible. To this end, it flattens difference so that the global market can consume it!

That’s hence “planetarity” asks us to step off that framework. Hence, reading planetarily doesn’t mean a luxurious smoothing over of regional differences, cultural variations, historical traumas, and unique linguistic idiosyncrasies so that they sell well in English! 😊

Rather it exhorts the reader to preserve the friction in the fiction! It means reading a text from a marginalised culture and acknowledging that its specific vernacular, geography, and reality are distinct works of art, unique and have their own aura, and hence cannot be flattened for a globalised audience of readers and consumers.

With this in mind, shall we now do a quick comparativist (not comparative!) reading of Anne Frank and Gitanjali Shree’s key texts?

Spivak demands that the “new comparative literature” should engage with the friction of the vernacular and the geopolitical power-dynamics of language. She warns against the flattening effect of English as a master-decoder, which often erases the specific, material realities of the source languages.

She also insists that we should first look at the exact position the vernacular language occupies in the global hierarchy. In other words, she exhorts us to view both texts are battlegrounds of linguistic power!

Dutch is a minor European language, though one historically attached to a vast colonial empire. Anne Frank writes then writes from a position of subjugation - a persecuted Jewish teenager hiding from the Nazi regime. Her specific vernacular is bourgeois, and she uses the typical adolescent-dialect! She was not writing for a global audience; she was writing to construct a self (“Kitty”) while being confined in the Secret Annex.

When we look at the diary from the ‘battleground of linguistic power’ perspective, we find that, the Diary becomes a paradigmatic example of translational violence. Otto Frank, and subsequent translators, had heavily edited the original Dutch manuscripts, cutting off Anne’s harsh critiques of her mother and her raw, teenage sexual awakening, which she describes quite explicitly something akin to what Kamala Das does, in her My Story!

Translations have thus so subtly sanitised, smoothened and flattened her rebellious vernacular, so that, the translation industry can transform her into a universal symbol of “humanist hope” for the Western world – and thereby make her trauma consumable by a global audience.

This introspective comparativist study on the linguistic power, reveals harsh, harsher truths for the reader – that her voice was only allowed to “speak” after having been heavily mediated and curated by the patriarchal authority of her father and later, the publishing industry.

For example, Anne had edited her own writings about her crush on Peter and had harsh and critical thoughts about her mother, but Otto Frank deliberately chose to include them for its viral and sensational appeal!

However, he deliberately chose to omit passages Anne wrote harshly about his marriage to her mother, Edith, as well as some candid descriptions of her own awakening sexuality.

Now coming to Gitanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand –

Although Hindi functions as a state language in India, globally, it remains subaltern to Anglophone literature. Moreover, Shree subverts the state’s sanitised, Sanskritised Hindi by writing in a radically syncretic vernacular. Ret Samadhi is saturated with Urdu, regional dialects, and dhwani (Sanskrit poetics of resonance), actively resisting linguistic purity and colonial borders.

Quite interestingly, the translator Daisy Rockwell (sides with Gitanjali), and refuses to globalise the language of the text to tweak and tune it for the global reader. She leaves a lot of cultural markers, wordplay, and specific concepts from the source language untranslated, thus forcing the global reader to experience the friction of the Hindi vernacular in all its aura!

On a personal note, I felt bad that the Translator’s preface was relegated to the last pages of the book.

This apart, now, let’s look at textual examples from the English translation of Tomb of Sand –

Here goes –

No, Ma, no, the children insisted, look outside, the sun is shining, get up, pick up the cane, it’s hanging right here, try some roasted rice, it has peas in it. Maybe she has loose motions, give her a digestive powder!

No, I will noooot. No, nyo, nyooo, Ma mewls.

She’s tired, poor thing, alone and defeated, lift her up, get her involved; entertain her!

Sympathy flows from them immeasurable as the waters of the Ganga, washing over Ma’s back.

Noooot nooooow, Ma tries to scream. But her voice comes out a whimper.

Daadi’s no no no won’t fly here. What should the back do now? At this breath of fresh air?

She whimpers, but fondly. T’so cold. Whisperwhisper mut-termutter. She melts a little.

An excuse. But a true one. Once uttered, truer. Really truly. Trembling within the quilt, trembles tumbling loose like a mouse running through the dark, Ma tenses and hides, but Siddharth is Sid. Must give it a try. So she whispers her mother’s old rhyme of winter: chilla jaara din chaalees, poos ke pandrah, maaghpachees - bitter cold winter for forty days, fifteen for the month of Poos, twenty-five for the month of Magh.

Speaks, after silence, and quotes a melodious proverb. The voice sings. A wavy wave. That bbbitter cccold for fforty days ff ifteeen for Poos, twenty-five ff or Mmmmagh. Awesome, Daadi! You and me should enter the Grammies, we’ll win for sure!

Something must be said about the daughter. We’ll call her Beti.

The window had become so useful that Ma had also learned how to hoist herself up, pivot and jump out. She came out in the silence of night with snacks - shakkarpara, mathri, bati chokha, tied up in bundles - and she’d meet up with Beti, banished from home, hidden away in the dense karonda bushes along the boundary wall, where they’d giggle like little girls.

A cursory study of the above excerpts reveal the slew of translation strategies that the translator has used in the English translation of the original.

For example,

First, let’s take up the concept of foreignisation! By translating shakkarpara to “sweet biscuits” or Daadi to “Grandma,” the translator forces the Anglophone reader to step into the Indian cultural world.

On an aside, foreignisation is a concept coined by translation theorist Lawrence Venuti. It is a deliberate strategy where the translator breaks the conventions of the target language (English) to preserve the cultural flavour of the source language (Hindi).

Secondly, let’s take up the concept of Culture-Specific Items (CSIs) or “Realia”

Words like mathri, karonda, and bati chokha are classified as CSIs. These are concepts regarding food, kinship, rituals, or flora/fauna that simply do not have a one-to-one equivalent in English. Translators retain them because translating them would erase their specific cultural identity.

Finally, let’s take up the concept of Code-Mixing. In phrases like “Awesome, Daadi!”, the text is reflecting code-mixing (or code-switching). This is the natural linguistic habit of bilingual speakers blending English and Hindi together in a single sentence, which is a hallmark of modern Indian English.

Thus, by doing a Spivakian comparativist study, we find ourselves equipped with the curiosity to see beyond the marken-driven shine and sheen of world literature, and engage with the crude realities of the regional in all its aura. By choosing planetarity over globalisation, we refuse to cut out the traumatic, localised voices of these writers.

In fact, Spivak challenges us to embrace this linguistic friction – the aura of the untamed vernaculars! And for this, again, we are forced to unlearn our privilege and meet Anne and Shree at their own regional soil, language and culture.

I would like to conclude this post with a memorable quote by Spivak -

Translation is the most intimate act of reading. I surrender to the text when I translate.

“I surrender to the text when I translate”. Here, the phrase “to surrender” means to set aside one’s own ego, one’s own preconceived notions, cultural biases, and the urge to impose one’s own logic onto the text. It is an act of humility where the translator stops trying to be the “master” of the meaning and instead becomes a receptive vessel to receive the text’s own unique voice!

How true!

PS: You may want to read a review of Anne Frank and her Diary, HERE on our blog. 

On "Unlearning Privilege" | A Cross-Cultural Comparativist Study of Ben Jonson and Athol Fugard ❤️

Ben Jonson & Athol Fugard

A Spivakian Comparativist Study

#onhisbirthdaytoday

This is the era of Comparative Literature, said Spivak, in her engaging book titled, Death of A Discipline, published in the year 2003, advocating for a genuinely global “new comparative literature.”

Moreover, she warns her readers on the ‘translation trap’ that she feels, is purely a “market-driven push” for massive anthologies of world literature in translation. That’s because she feels that, relying exclusively on translations can flatten the cultural and historical specificities of texts, making them easily consumable while ignoring the power dynamics of that language she warns.

Spivak believes that the importance of comparative literature lies in its potential to foster ethical cross-cultural encounters without committing “interpretative violence”.

And this requires the ‘death’ of the discipline of comparative literature as we have long known it thus far, and the ‘birth’ of a “new comparative literature,” in which the discipline is reborn - one that is not appropriated and determined by the market!

Also, Spivak argues that the discipline must move beyond its Eurocentric origins and resist being commodified by market-driven “world literature” anthologies.

In this regard, she introduces the concept of “transnational literacy” - the ability to read and understand the world in all its complex differences without imposing uniform Western frameworks or capitalist norms!

And for this, the comparativist must necessarily “unlearn their privilege”, says Spivak. Which means, instead of imposing Western theoretical models onto Third World texts or relying on “native informants,” the comparativist scholar must engage in deep “languaging” - the rigorous and consistent effort of learning vernaculars to engage with marginalised voices on their own terms.

Finally, Spivak highlights on the importance of the study of literature. To her, the real study of literature is deeply tied to one’s ethical and political responsibility. By engaging with marginalised voices and reading texts from the Global South on a “level playing field” with European classics, the academy can prevent the voices of the oppressed from being silenced or misrepresented.

On this note, we shall now engage with marginalised voices and reading texts from the Global South on a “level playing field” with European classics by doing a quick comparative reading of Ben Jonson and Athol Fugard!

Both were playwrights born on this particular day, 11th June, 360 years apart – one is an European classic, while the other is from the Global South!

Ben Jonson was born on 11th June 1572, while Athol Fugard was born exactly 360 years later on 11th June 1932.

Jonson is a towering figure in English Renaissance theatre while Fugard is a towering figure in South African theatre, famous for his powerful, anti-apartheid works.

Both Ben and Athol used the stage for providing their audience with a biting social commentary of their time. And what’s more? Both acted in their own plays as well.

Both playwrights used the stage as a surgical tool to satirise and to dissect the vices and the immoralities of their respective eras.

As much water has flown under the bridge on Ben Jonson, me thought of highlighting a few salients on Athol Fugard for us all from Gale’s Encyclopedia of World Literature.

Here goes –

Fugard credits his mother with teaching him to view South African society with a critical eye.

By the 1930s, legal and social discrimination was firmly in place against South Africans of non-European ancestry. After slavery ended there in 1833, blacks were required to carry identification cards, and in the early twentieth century, the Native Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 prohibited blacks from owning land in areas of white residence.

Only 13 percent of the land in South Africa was put aside for blacks, though they formed 70 percent of the population.

By the 1930s, Afrikaners - the more uncompromising supporters of segregation than English-speaking whites - began using the term apartheid to refer to their ideas of racial separation.

As a white child growing up in a segregated society, Fugard resisted the racist upbringing offered him, but could not escape apartheid’s influence. He insisted that the family’s black servants call him Master Harold, and one day, he spat in the face of Sam Semela, a waiter in the Fugard boarding house, who was the best friend he had as a child.

Fugard moved to England in 1959 to write, but his work received little attention there, and he realised he needed to work in the context of his home country.

South African apartheid policies were firmly in place, and blacks, coloureds, and Asians (a racial category added to apartheid laws in the 1950s) were fully, legally segregated from whites.

When he returned home, he completed his first and only novel. Tsotsi (1980) concerns a young black hoodlum who accidentally kidnaps a baby and is compelled to face the consequences of his actions. Fugard tried to destroy the manuscript, but a copy survived and was published in 1980.

While finishing Tsotsi, Fugard wrote his break through play, The Blood Knot (1961). The idea came to him in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre, when police killed blacks protesting the apartheid pass laws - a turning point for all South Africans.

The Blood Knot portrays the oscillating sense of conflict and harmony between two brothers born to the same mother. Morris has light skin and can pass for white. He confronts the truth about his identity when he returns home to live with his dark-skinned brother, Zach.

Fugard played the role of Morris himself. The play was first presented in 1961 to an invited audience. At that time, blacks and whites were banned from appearing on the same stage or sitting in the same audience.

The Blood Knot struck South Africa’s segregated culture like a bombshell. In 1962, Fugard supported a boycott against legally segregated theatre audiences.

Fugard is highly regarded by literary and theatre critics. Some have called him the greatest playwright of his era. He commands respect for his unfailing opposition to apartheid and for his sophisticated explorations of its subtly destructive effects. Critics have also appreciated his ability to elicit emotion without declining into melo drama.

Most South African drama, especially the nation’s lively alternative theatre, bears the stamp of Fugard’s work. His acclaim is greater outside his home country. In the United States, he is one of the most frequently performed living playwrights,

records Gale.

Now, dear reader, shall we now attempt a Spivakian Comparativist Reading choosing just one aspect of their works? 😊

According to Spivak, a comparativist scholar, must necessarily engage with the specific vernaculars and power dynamics of the languages used by the respective authors.

Taking this point into consideration, we find that, both playwrights were masters of the vernacular. However, they ‘used’ their respective ‘vernaculars’ for serving their own “political realities” of their era.

Jonson captured the slang, jargon, and street dialects of Jacobean London (especially of the puritans, thieves, merchants) to expose the hypocrisy and greed of a rapidly commercialising society, while Fugard captured the complex linguistic vernacular of South Africa - mixing South African English, Afrikaans, and the rhythms of indigenous languages.

By doing ‘deep languaging’, we can analyse these specific dialects carefully, and understand who holds power in these dialogues!

As such, we step aside from the vainglorious, cliched comparative approach of exalting them both as “clever English playwrights”.

And that’s the very essence of a Comparativist scholar, claims Spivak.

To sum up in the words of eminent critic Scupin Richards,

Trueblue ethical reading begins the moment we ‘step aside’, ‘unlearn our privilege’, and start listening to the voices of the vernacular in all its aura!

Transforming Tihar | How Empathy and Literature Forge Legendary IPS Officers ❤️

From Literature to Leadership

Kiran Bedi and the Power of the ‘English & IPS’ Combo

#onherbirthdaytoday

9th June 2026

Today, happens to be the birthday of the legendary Kiran Bedi – a woman who made history by becoming the very first woman to join the IPS – The Indian Police Service. In fact, she happened to be the only woman (in a batch of 80 men) to subsequently undergo rigorous police training, thereby shattering a massive glass ceiling in a heavily male-dominated profession!

Interestingly, Kiran Bedi holds a BA in English from Government College from Women, Amritsar, an MA in Political Science, Bachelors in Law from the University of Delhi, and a PhD in Social Sciences from IIT Delhi (focusing on drug abuse and domestic violence in society).

I personally loved the vibrant positivity in the title of her 1998 book titled, It’s Always Possible: Transforming One of the Largest Prisons in the World. The book documents the sweeping reforms that Kiran Bedi made during her tenure as Inspector General of Tihar Jail.

Well, as we all know, Tihar jail is one of the largest in the world spanning 200 acres, housing over 9,700 inmates - men, women, adolescents and children, including both Indians and foreigners. The inmates include unconvicted alleged offenders, convicts and remandees as well.

When Bedi arrived on the scene, the prison was a completely “rotten system” characterised by corruption on all sides, drug abuse, gang extortion, and pathetic living conditions for its inmates (including unhygienic food with insects and metallic residues).

How she transformed the prison system through her nuanced and humane approach to the inmates, forms the crux of the book.

In the initial chapter Kiran alludes to the initial situation within Tihar -

What I saw inside Tihar was captured with human concern integral to my duty. I was there to correct and not to accuse. The magnitude of the problem was enormous. It took me months. Institutions take their time to reveal, despite individual impatience. Tihar Jail tested my patience to the maximum, and ultimately did cave in for the inhabitants to call the same monument ‘Tihar Ashram’.

I took charge as Inspector General (Prisons) on World Labour Day (May 1) 1993, not really being able to fathom the magnitude of labour that would be required of me to negotiate the problems waiting behind the bars.

I had heard of the gory practices that continued unexposed beneath those searchlights. A whole world seemed to have been exiled behind those high walls with rusted frames.

It always seemed another world, banished behind those dead walls. I had heard about the gang wars, prisoners running extortion centres from within the prison, and tales of rampant corruption, violence and heart-rending tragedies.

But I was a soldier, duty-bound to take charge of this hell-hole,

says Kiran Bedi.

She strategically made a bold shift of perspective, from “accusation mode” to “correction mode”. And this shift from “accusation” to “correction” mode required actionable initiatives like education programmes, vocational training, and introducing daily prayers and yoga to combat laziness and despair among the inmates.

Kiran shows her readers the power of community involvement and community engagement by inviting the community inside Tihar. As a result, for the first time in 35 years, voluntary groups, including international health organisations and NGOs were brought in to provide counselling, medical aid, legal support, and entertainment to the inmates.

Moreover, Kiran promoted a vibrant internal community within the walls of Tihar by encouraging educated prisoners to teach literacy classes and actively involved inmates in improving their environment, such as participating in large-scale tree-planting and social forestry projects.

Also, Bedi was fully aware of the fact that, physical confinement without mental and spiritual rehabilitation breeds further criminality. With this in mind, she advocated the importance of structured mental health interventions for the inmates.

Finally, Kiran focuses on the vulnerable sections among the inmates, including women and children.

The book emphasises on the need for targeted welfare programs for these groups by initiating health and hygiene monitoring for children living in the prison with their mothers, starting educational creches, and fighting roadblocks to get bank accounts opened for working women inmates.

Just an excerpt on that note, from the book –

I moved to the women’s ward as if by instinct. I knew that the women would have been waiting for me. As I entered, all the women present in the courtyard rushed towards me, uninhibited and happy, cheering my visit.

Was this a homecoming?

The ward was a total contrast to that of the men. The women promptly sat around me, wanting to interact and hear what I had to say. They had taken it for granted that I would visit them. Looking at their faces, I felt they were my children and I had indeed come home for them. 

Each one, I sensed, needed a hand on her shoulder to help her cry out her grief and relieve herself of the agony within. Yet, all of them were putting up a cheerful appearance for my sake.

I asked them: “Do you read and write here?”

They said: “No.”

I said: “Would you like to?”

They said: “Yes.”

“Very good, we will study here, and before you leave, you shall be literate.”

They applauded in excitement.

My prayer with the men gave me the joy of seeing hope and acceptance; with the women, something pulled me from within. I had been ‘imprisoned’ - Tihar was going to be my destiny,

she writes. 

I’d personally suggest that you read the entire book, which I personally feel is a real leadership guide telling us that, even the most “condemned” institutions can be revitalised, through collective community action.

Added, I personally feel that, the English Literature & IPS Combo is in fact, one of the best combos for the Administrative Services.

That’s because literature is the world’s largest archive of human psychology in all its glory! In fact it is a living library of human character. By reading extensively through poetry, drama, and fiction, a student of literature has already encountered every facet of human emotions – including ambition, betrayal, grief, and desperation.

Hence, when an officer encounters a crime of passion, or a criminal fraud, they are essentially watching literature at work!

There are quite a lot of such English Literature & IPS combos in India. I would love to mention just a few notable ones here.

Shri K. Vijay Kumar, IPS, who is best known for heading the Special Task Force (STF) that successfully neutralised the notorious sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, did his BA & MA in English Literature in MCC.

Former IPS officer and CRPF chief K. Vijay Kumar
being conferred with the Padma Shri by the President of India

Shri K. Muthukaruppan, IPS, the former Director General of Police (DGP) and former Commissioner of Police for Chennai, did his BA & MA in English Literature in MCC.

Smt Manjari Jaruhar, IPS, Bihar’s first female IPS officer completed her BA in English Literature at Patna Women’s College, before clearing the Civil Services Exam.

Smt Meeran Chadha Borwankar, IPS, who served as Mumbai’s Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) and Maharashtra’s Inspector General of Prisons, holds an MA in English Literature from DAV College, Jalandhar.

Smt Jija Madhavan Harisingh, IPS, was the first female IPS officer from South India. She completed both her BA and MA in English Literature at the University of Kerala and went on to hold various prestigious positions, retiring as Director General of Police (DGP) in Karnataka

Smt R. Sreelekha, IPS, was the first-ever female IPS officer in Kerala and the state’s first female DGP. Before joining the police force, she graduated with a BA in English Literature from the Government College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram, and completed her Masters in English at the Institute of English, University of Kerala.

And now for the ‘literary’ takeaway for today - 

Well, all these remarkable IPS officers (with special reference to Kiran Bedi IPS on her birthday today) 😊 have proved that when the profound empathy that they have learnt from literature is applied to their administrative responsibilities, the result is, as we all have witnessed - genuine, lasting human transformation!

And akin to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, they become a literary ‘Daniel come to judgment!’ 😊

Why Did George Lamming "Break" the Bildungsroman? 💜

When ‘Progress’ Means Alienation | Beyond Bourgeois Individualism

#onhisbirthdaytoday

8th June 2026

One quintessentially postcolonialesque feature that we find in postcolonial novels is the subversion of the traditional ‘Western’ conceptualisation of the bildungsroman!

Btw, dear reader, I’ve kinda attempted coining this new phrase - quintessentially postcolonialesque - slightly rephrasing it from Bernard Shaw’s 1891 essay, “The Quintessence of Ibsenism”. 😊

So why does Lamming subvert the traditional ‘Western’ bildungsroman?

That’s because the traditional bildungsroman (like in Jane Eyre, or Huckleberry Finn) is basically individual-driven, tracking that individual’s moral and psychological growth, and finally culminating in their harmonious assimilation into the social order. However, for Lamming, this ‘individual-centric’ social order is a strategic colonial hierarchy designed meant to subjugate the colonised, and hence he makes the Barbadian village of Creighton as the real protagonist in his 1953 novel, In the Castle of My Skin.

Although the novel tracks the coming-of-age of a boy named G., Lamming skillfully makes the village of Creighton as the real protagonist, as Lamming feels that, the individual’s psychological awakening is intertwined with the collective socio-political awakening of the entire peasant class!

Well, this then takes us to the concept of “bourgeois individualism”.

So what is bourgeois individualism?

It is a concept rooted in Marxist and critical theory that highlights a particular model of human identity that emerged alongside the rise of capitalism and the middle class - the bourgeoisie.

Bourgeois individualism presents the human being as an individualistic, isolated, self-contained, and fundamentally self-interested actor, where the said individual views the society not as an organic community, but merely as a marketplace to maximise their own profits.

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe could be cited as a towering archetype to this credo!

When Defoe’s protagonist Crusoe is stranded on an island, he quickly sets about commodifying the environment around him and thereby domesticates nature, by building enclosures around him!

Lamming seeks to deconstruct this concept of bourgeois individualism in his novel, In the Castle of My Skin.

Take for example, the concept of education that he foregrounds in the novel. In general, education is seen as a vehicle of empowerment meant to empower the individual and integrate them into the society, thereby empowering the society that they dwell in.

However, Lamming subverts this by presenting colonial education as an apparatus of alienation. As G. progresses through the high school system, he does not become more integrated into his community! Instead, he becomes estranged from his peers, his mother, and his cultural roots. That’s because his education forces an internalisation of British values, leaving him isolated within the “castle of his skin.”

“Progress” in the colonial context, then equates to a forced sense of alienation rather than cultivating a true sense of belonging!

That’s hence Lamming denies closure in the novel.

While the western bildungsroman ends with the protagonist finding their proverbial place in the world, Lamming concludes his novel with G. preparing to leave for Trinidad, totally isolated and alienated from his village and deeply uncertain about his future. By doing so, Lamming presents us with an impactful takeaway – that, true harmony requires confronting the historical trauma of race and class that has subjugated and enslaved the colonised natives.

Now, for a few lines highlighting the USP of the legend on his birthday today, from The Gale & The Guardian –

The Guardian has given a fitting tribute to the legend on his passing away, four years ago! And I quote –

The six novels and the collections of essays by George Lamming, who has died aged 94, did much to shape Caribbean literary culture. He also contributed to it as an educator and activist intellectual, mentoring a host of young writers and scholars in the Caribbean and beyond.

Intensely aware of the impact of colonialism on individual lives and the evolutionary process of social, political and economic reconstruction in the region, Lamming was inspired by the idea of a unified Caribbean.

Now from The Gale –

George Lamming is a novelist and essayist born in Barbados, who led a Caribbean renaissance in England. Ngugi wa Thiong’o has singled out three works as having impressed and influenced him in particular: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin (1953), and Peter Abrahams’s Tell Freedom (1954). Informally, Ngugi’s political thinking was revolutionised by his exposure to works by Karl Marx and Franz Fanon and by socialist academics.

Happy birthday to the visionary who showed us that the true protagonist of history is never the individual, but the people!

As eminent critic Scupin Richards puts it,

In a highly materialistic world that continues to be greatly obsessed with the illusion of the self-made individual, Lamming’s writing and his legacy remind us that true progress is never about rising above your community, but rising with it.

How true!

Literary Cartographers | How Gwendolyn Brooks and Orhan Pamuk “Mapped the Soul” of the City 💜

Of Kitchenettes and Gecekondus | When Writers Turn Cities into Living Texts

Gwendolyn Brooks

& Orhan Pamuk

#onherbirthdaytoday

#onhisbirthdaytoday

7th June 2026

Before I begin this post, I have a confession to make.

Yes, today happens to be the birthday of yet another famous writer - Nikki Giovanni! But I couldn’t tag her under this blogpost because of the fact that, I couldn’t perceive a lot of connects amongst these three writers, (Pamuk, Nikki and Brooks) when taken together. 

Hence, I’ve discussed her in a separate post. Yes, Nikki is HERE, btw. 😊

However, quite interestingly, Gwendolyn Brooks and Orhan Pamuk who share their birthdays today, seem to share quite a lot of similarities as well.

Both writers seem to anchor their entire bodies of work in the geography of a single city.

In other words, the city becomes a text that they seem to have “read” extensively, and then charted it out for their readers.

Pamuk foregrounds the post-imperial Istanbul, while Brooks anchors her work in mid-century Black Chicago (specifically Bronzeville)!

And while Pamuk deals with the melancholic weight of a fallen empire and the clash between East and West, Brooks documents the localised, systemic confinement of Black Americans during and after the Great Migration.

It is quite fascinating to note that, both authors treat the city not just as a backdrop, but as an active, force that shapes the psychology, class struggles, and ultimate destinies of its residents.

Brooks’ Kitchenettes and Pamuk’s Gecekondus are examples to this credo.

For example, in her poem titled, “Kitchenette Building,” Brooks examines how the overcrowded apartments of Bronzeville - a direct result of racist redlining and predatory housing practices – serve to suffocate the spirit.

Similarly, in Pamuk’s novel titled, A Strangeness in My Mind, Pamuk tracks the rise of Istanbul’s gecekondus - shantytowns built overnight by rural migrants.

By elevating the subaltern figures of the street, Pamuk and Brooks not only act as urban archivists but also serve to produce a counter-discursive framework against the grand, official narratives of their respective nations.

In one of his interviews that he gave in November 2009, he talks about the concept of Turkish melancholy that pervades his writing. He contrasts it with the western concept of melancholy, saying that, while Turkish melancholy is communal and collective, Western sense of melancholy is individualistic!

For example, in his autobiographical memoir titled, Istanbul: Memories and the City, he dissects the concept of Turkish melancholy while “reading” the city.

Now for the literary takeaways – as usual -

The literary tradition of the “city as a text” or the “city as a character” have for long been great sources of inspiration for writers across the ages. Hence, when a writer maps a city, they simultaneously document milieu of that particular era as well.

I am tempted to give away a few more prominent writers who used the town or the city as a text/character in their writing.

James Joyce’s Dublin foregrounds the hyper-local literary geography of the topos (place). He so beautifully captured the streets, the pubs, the dialects and the social cultural landscape of Dublin such that, he himself once claimed that, if Dublin were destroyed, it could be rebuilt brick by brick using his novel as a blueprint.

Charles Dickens through his reimagining of Victorian London captures a city rapidly transforming under the weight of the Industrial Revolution. Be it the fog-choked alleyways of Bleak House or the bureaucracies and debtor’s prisons of Little Dorrit, Dickens used London’s topography to critique profound class stratification prevalent at that time. (It was the best of times/ It was the worst of times).

Zadie Smith gives us a multicultural slice of North West London, thereby mapping the complex intersections of race, class, and identity in the process.

Fyodor Dostoevsky foregrounds St. Petersburg as a character in his writing. Interestingly, St. Petersburg was an artificially constructed city, built by Peter the Great as Russia’s “window to the West.” Dostoevsky used its brutal, cramped tenements to mirror the psychological fever and alienation of his characters. In works like Crime and Punishment and The Double, the city’s yellow fog, muddy canals, and claustrophobic taverns actively drive his protagonists toward madness and existential crisis.

Whether it’s Brooks’s Bronzeville, Pamuk’s Istanbul, or Joyce’s Dublin, these authors prove that the greatest cities are indeed living, breathing texts!

And it’s a truth universally acknowledged, that, while bureaucrats map the body of the city, it is the writer who maps its soul!

Literary cartographers, we call them! 😊

PS: You may want to read Dr. Benet’s soulful review of Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City, on our past post, dated 17 October 2020, HERE on our blog. 

You may also want to read our past blogpost on the Painting of the Cityscapes, featuring great writers who “painted” Cityscapes in their writing (that includes Pamuk) on our past post, dated 21 March 2019, HERE on our blog. 

Street Syntax and Civic Engagement | the Art of Reading Silences 💜

“Reading” Silences | How Nikki Successfully Bridged the “Missing Gaps”

Nikki Giovanni

#onherbirthdaytoday

7th June 2026

As professors, something that we very often tell our students, is to “read” the silences in the page, and “identify” the gap, which is the crucial starting point of success!

Well, we emphasise quite often on reading the silences, and identifying the gaps, because of the simple reason that, the human brain is by default wired to naturally focus on what is already in front of us. Therefore, identifying a gap requires us to look at a “seemingly” complete picture and imagine “What’s missing here?”

In short, finding the missing gap requires reading the silences. When deconstructing a text, a structure, a value system, or a societal norm, the most profound ‘eureka moments’ come not from what is explicitly stated, but from what is left unsaid, silenced or marginalised.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, takes an active, creative and vibrant imagination to look at a canonical oops established narrative and ask, "Whose voice is missing here?"

Nikki Giovanni, the renowned Poet of the Black Revolution, did just that!

She started reading the silences, and began asking herself, “What’s missing here?”

And how-o-how did she do that?

First and foremost, she felt that the language that she spoke thus far wasn’t hers in the first place. Hence, instead of adhering to standard academic English, she started to actively deconstruct it.

To this end, Nikki began infusing her verse with street vernacular, colloquial syntax, and the syncopated, call-and-response rhythms of jazz and blues. By decentering such white literary standards, she helped establish a distinct “Black aesthetic” that validated the lived experiences, language, and oral traditions of African Americans as legitimate, high art.

Secondly, Nikki also felt that, the broader Black Arts Movement was often dominated by male figures like Amiri Baraka.

Hence, she stepped in to carve out a space for Black women in the movement. In fact, she dedicated herself to uplifting female writers - who might otherwise have been sidelined - by editing and publishing Night Comes Softly (1970) – an anthology that stands tall as one of the earliest and most vital anthologies composed entirely of poetry by Black women.

By doing so, she was able to give a space for the marginalised women’s voices.

Thirdly, Nikki also observed that, it was very difficult for marginalised voices to be heard and accepted by mainstream media and publishing houses. She was fully aware that her militant poetry would be rejected by the so-called mainstream publishers who weren’t interested in the voice of a radical Black woman. 

Hence, without waiting for traditional validation, Nikki decided on ways to take her work directly to her audience. With this in mind, she formed her own publishing company, NikTom Ltd, and self-published her first volume, Black Feeling Black Talk (1968). She sold the book out of the trunk of her car and launched her second book at the Birdland jazz club in New York. This hands-on approach propelled her to become one of the few poets to ever author multiple New York Times bestsellers.

Fourthly and finally, as University Distinguished Professor with the Department of English at Virginia Tech, where she spent over three decades, Nikki felt that, chasing academic scores and grades only promoted passivity amongst students. And hence, she boldly encouraged her students to express themselves creatively, and acquire for themselves life skills, instead of just chasing the grades.

Her bold attempt to read the silences, and analyse “What is missing?” made her a champion of the voiceless. Her influence thus extended well beyond the page, bridging the gap between literary theory and civic engagement!

May her tribe increase!

So what pray, is the takeaway?

Well, the next time you ‘read’ a text, watch out for ‘what’s missing’, and try ‘reading’ the silences!

That way, you are not only engaging with the text, but also engaging in shaping society for the better!

PS: You may want to read our past post on How to Identify Research Gaps, HERE on our blog. 

Outsiders by Default | The Superfluous and the Alienated in Pushkin & Mann ❤️

Pushkin’s Superfluous Man

and

Mann’s Alienated Artist!

#onhisbirthdaytoday

6 June 2026

What if you come across a character who is brilliant, over-educated, aristocratic, with immense potential but is paralysed by a profound lack of purpose in life?

Again,

What if you come across a character who steps outside of life, in order to observe, analyse, and represent life, and thereby sacrifices the blessed joys of being a joyful and involved participant in the dance of life?

Well, these are two archetypes that we find in Pushkin’s and Mann’s writings, respectively.

The first one is called the “superfluous man” archetype, whereas the second hypo is the archetype of the “alienated artist”.

The “superfluous man” archetype was in fact brewing piping hot in all of Russian literature for decades.

It was the famous Ivan Turgenev who had officially coined the phrase “superfluous man” in his 1850 novella titled, The Diary of a Superfluous Man, to describe this socio-cultural crisis in the Russia of the past.

So who pray, is the “superfluous man”?

The “superfluous man” refers to a highly privileged, highly educated aristocratic individual whose talents, intellect, and potential are entirely wasted because he has no meaningful function in his society.

Interestingly, however, even a quarter-century earlier, Alexander Pushkin had codified this archetype of the “superfluous man” in his verse novel Eugene Onegin.

In fact it was Pushkin who had come up with the first ever blueprint of the “superfluous man” archetype, in his verse novel Eugene Onegin, when the term wasn’t even coined as yet.

So what makes Onegin special?

Well, Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is famous across the world for any many reasons.

It is a masterpiece in all of Russian literature, pioneering the novel-in-verse format.

Pushkin invented a unique 14-line poetic structure (famously called the Onegin stanza) that defined Russian fiction for the next century.

His character Onegin is afflicted by an unrelenting, crushing boredom - an existential fatigue! Having exhausted the superficial pleasures of St. Petersburg high society, he finds himself incapable of finding meaning in anything else - not in managing his estate, not in reading, and not in love!

Yes! Pushkin had invented an entirely new verse form specifically for this verse-novel!

The entire novel is written in 389 fourteen-line stanzas of iambic tetrameter.

The rhyme scheme is rigidly fixed as aBaBccDDeFFeG.

Lowercase letters represent feminine rhymes (stress on the second-to-last syllable).

Uppercase letters represent masculine rhymes (stress on the final syllable).

The tragedy of the superfluous man lies in the sad fact that, his intelligence doesn’t result in any action. Although he is acutely aware of the evils and the hollowness of his society, yet he lacks the will, or the passion to rebel against it or change it.

Well, today happens to be the birthday of Alexander Pushkin - the pioneering architect of the Modern Russian Language.

Like Oliver Goldsmith, “he touched nothing which he did not adorn”.

Indeed, Pushkin was adept at writing in a variety of genres, namely, the Verse Novel, the Historical Novel, the Realist Short Story, the Historical Drama, the Narrative Epic, etc.

If Pushkin could be called the pioneering architect of the superfluous man archetype, then Mann is the Man of the Alienated Artist archetype!

That takes us to Thomas Mann - Nobel Laureate in Literature for 1929! 

So who is the Alienated Artist?

To Thomas Mann, the alienated artist is an exile – an epistemological exile - someone who is alienated from the warmth and normalcy of human existence by the very nature of their calling!

In order to observe, analyse, and represent life, the artist must step outside of it. One cannot simultaneously be an involved, joyful participant in the dance of life and at the same time document the choreography too! In other words, you cannot have your cake and eat it too, says Mann, Thomas Mann.

In short, the artist literally looks through a glass window at his childhood friends dancing, knowing fully well that his calling forever prevents him from joining them.

That’s hence Mann’s alienated artist is sadly, a tragic figure, because of the fact that, they are not only burdened with the task of giving meaning to life and culture, but also pay the price of that task – as they are forbidden from truly living that life for themselves in the process. His novella Felix Krull, Death in Venice, Doctor Faustus etc., are a few examples to this credo.

In short, both writers, although from different and differing social milieus, write about individuals and their unique archetypes to critique a society that has no productive space for its most sensitive or intellectually-liberated people!