Maxine Lavon Montgomery
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781496828873
- eISBN:
- 9781496828927
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496828873.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
Montgomery's essay interrogates the close, yet ambivalent relationship between Morrison's most recent work of fiction and Greco-Roman myth with dual accounts of the legendary Galatea as both an ...
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Montgomery's essay interrogates the close, yet ambivalent relationship between Morrison's most recent work of fiction and Greco-Roman myth with dual accounts of the legendary Galatea as both an animated statue that comes to life as a result of the careful sculpting on the part of Pygmalion and an enchanting sea-nymph who inspires the musician, Polyphemus. Through a reliance upon recent works by post-colonial, diaspora, and trans-national scholars Paul Gilroy, Homi Bhabha, Tuire Valkeakari, and others, along with the deconstructionist theory of Jacques Derrida, she pays close attention to Morrison's narrative and rhetorical method in talking back to Ovid as a means of conflating the twofold identities ascribed to Galatea and recycling classical tropes using a strategy invested in a diaspora imaginary involving slavery, the Middle Passage, and colonization -- key events defining a specifically raced, trans-national history.Less
Montgomery's essay interrogates the close, yet ambivalent relationship between Morrison's most recent work of fiction and Greco-Roman myth with dual accounts of the legendary Galatea as both an animated statue that comes to life as a result of the careful sculpting on the part of Pygmalion and an enchanting sea-nymph who inspires the musician, Polyphemus. Through a reliance upon recent works by post-colonial, diaspora, and trans-national scholars Paul Gilroy, Homi Bhabha, Tuire Valkeakari, and others, along with the deconstructionist theory of Jacques Derrida, she pays close attention to Morrison's narrative and rhetorical method in talking back to Ovid as a means of conflating the twofold identities ascribed to Galatea and recycling classical tropes using a strategy invested in a diaspora imaginary involving slavery, the Middle Passage, and colonization -- key events defining a specifically raced, trans-national history.
Radhika Singha
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197525586
- eISBN:
- 9780197554562
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197525586.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
Though largely invisible in histories of World War one, over 550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian Army were followers or non-combatants. From porters and construction workers in the ‘Coolie Corps’, ...
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Though largely invisible in histories of World War one, over 550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian Army were followers or non-combatants. From porters and construction workers in the ‘Coolie Corps’, to ‘menial’ servants and those who maintained supply lines and removed the wounded from the battlefield, Radhika Singha draws upon their story to give the sub-continent an integral rather than ‘external’ place in this world –wide conflict. The labor regimes built on the backs of these 'coolies' had long sustained imperial militarism. This was particularly visible in the border infrastructures put in place by combinations of waged work, corvee, and, tributary labor.These work regimes, and the political arrangements which sustained them, would be bent to the demands of global war. This amplified trans-border ambitions and anxieties and pulled war zones closer home. Manpower hunger unsettled the institutional divide between Indian combatants and non-combatants. The ‘higher’ followers benefitted, less so the ‘menial’ followers, whose position recalled the dependency of domestic service and who included in their ranks the ‘untouchables’ consigned to stigmatised work. The book explores the experiences of the Indian Labor Corps in Mesopotamia and France and concludes with an exploration of the prolonged, complicated nature of the ‘end of the war’ for the sub-continent. The Coolie's Great War views the conflict unfolding over the world through the lens of Indian labor, bringing new social, spatial, temporal and sensory dimensions to the narrative.Less
Though largely invisible in histories of World War one, over 550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian Army were followers or non-combatants. From porters and construction workers in the ‘Coolie Corps’, to ‘menial’ servants and those who maintained supply lines and removed the wounded from the battlefield, Radhika Singha draws upon their story to give the sub-continent an integral rather than ‘external’ place in this world –wide conflict. The labor regimes built on the backs of these 'coolies' had long sustained imperial militarism. This was particularly visible in the border infrastructures put in place by combinations of waged work, corvee, and, tributary labor.These work regimes, and the political arrangements which sustained them, would be bent to the demands of global war. This amplified trans-border ambitions and anxieties and pulled war zones closer home. Manpower hunger unsettled the institutional divide between Indian combatants and non-combatants. The ‘higher’ followers benefitted, less so the ‘menial’ followers, whose position recalled the dependency of domestic service and who included in their ranks the ‘untouchables’ consigned to stigmatised work. The book explores the experiences of the Indian Labor Corps in Mesopotamia and France and concludes with an exploration of the prolonged, complicated nature of the ‘end of the war’ for the sub-continent. The Coolie's Great War views the conflict unfolding over the world through the lens of Indian labor, bringing new social, spatial, temporal and sensory dimensions to the narrative.
