|
BOBC |
 |
 |
 |
|
Nayar, Pramod K. "The Postcolonial Gothic: munnu, graphic narrative and the terrors of the nation." Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 8. (2016): 2–12. Added by: joachim (22/03/2017, 12:22) Last edited by: joachim (22/03/2017, 12:23) |
 |
| Resource type: Journal Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed BibTeX citation key: Nayar2016c Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "Munnu", Anthropomorphism, Horror, India, Nationalism, Postcolonialism, Sajad. Malik Creators: Nayar Collection: Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities |
Views: 7/876
|
| Attachments | URLs http://rupkatha.co ... nial-gothic-munnu/ |
| Abstract |
|
“The traditional European Gothic, dating back to the eighteenth century in literature and the arts, with its theme of decadence, violence in families, haunted homes, crypts with unnameable secrets, madness and memory has continued in the modern era with some variations, as documented by commentators (Punter, 1996; Punter and Byron, 2004; Spooner, 2006; Spooner and Emma McEvoy, 2007; Punter, 2012). Postcolonial refigurations of the Gothic have also come in for some attention (Davison, 2003; Wisker, 2007; Mabura, 2008). The aim of this essay is to outline, at least partially,the postcolonial Gothic’s principal features through a reading of Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir (2015), a graphic narrative on Kashmir. Sajad locates his work in the tradition of Art Spiegelman’s celebrated Maus by representing the Kashmiris as deer and the Indians as humans, and this serves as a meta-commentary for the culturally literate reader because the Kashmiris, like the Jews in Spiegelman, are hunted animals. The awed, frightened, tearful visages of the deer is reassigned its symbolic value: from the iconic Hangul deer of the region, it becomes a symbol of the hunted animal. The Kashmiri wears the face of the hunted deer. The graphic medium, needless to say, serves Sajad, an established cartoonist, to develop his themes of terrifying nationalisms, haunting, embedded violence, foreignness, loss, wastage/wasting and cultural crypts through both word and image. If the Gothic is a ‘literature of terror’, as Punter’s famous book on the history of the genre was subtitled, then Sajad’s work is filled with just such a terror, and he renders it Gothic with his art and text. The Gothic itself becomes a useful frame in which to read Sajad’s work because the Gothic’s interest in the role of history, haunting, memories and crypts are metaphors throughout his work.”
|