Performance and performativity in contemporary Indian fiction in English / / by Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru.

• VerfasserIn: Draga Alexandru, Maria-Sabina,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands ;, Boston, [Massachusetts] : : Brill Rodopi,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Costerus New Series 210.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (301 pages).

This book starts with a consideration of a 1997 issue of the New Yorker that celebrated fifty years of Indian independence, and goes on to explore the development of a pattern of performance and performativity in contemporary Indian fiction in English (Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Vikram Chandra). Such fiction, which constructs identity through performative acts, is built around a nomadic understanding of the self and implies an evolution of narrative language towards performativity whereby the text itself becomes nomadic. A comparison with theatrical performance (Peter Brook’s Mahabharata and Girish Karnad’s ‘theatre of roots’) serves to support the argument that in both theatre and fiction the concepts of performance and performativity transform classical Indian mythic poetics. In the mythic symbiosis of performance and storytelling in Indian tradition within a cyclical pattern of estrangement from and return to the motherland and/or its traditions, myth becomes a liberating space of consciousness, where rigid categories and boundaries are transcended.

Table of Contents

Preliminary material / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- METAMORPHOSES OF THE SELF ON THE BORDER BETWEEN ‘EAST’ AND ‘WEST’ / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- WRITING IN ENGLISH: A PERFORMATIVE ACT IN CONTEMPORARY INDIAN FICTION / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- CHANGES AND CHALLENGES IN THE NOVEL FORM: FROM MYTH TO PERFORMANCE TO NOMADIC TEXTUALITY / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- INTERCULTURAL EPIC IN PERFORMANCE: PETER BROOK AND GIRISH KARNAD / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- REPERFORMED TRADITIONS: INDIAN THEATRE AND ITS CONTEMPORARY AVATARS / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- REPOSITIONING SCHEHERAZADE: FROM STORYTELLING TO PERFORMANCE IN SALMAN RUSHDIE’S MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- STORYING THE FATWA: FROM THE SATANIC VERSES TO HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- MIGRANT IDENTITY PERFORMANCE POLITICS IN SALMAN RUSHDIE’S THE SATANIC VERSES / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- WRITING THE UNSPOKEN: EXCLUSION AND ARUNDHATI ROY’S ÉCRITURE FÉMININE IN THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- PERFORMANCES OF MARGINALITY IN ARUNDHATI ROY’S THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- POSTMODERN SCHEHERAZADES BETWEEN STORYTELLING AND THE NOVEL FORM: VIKRAM CHANDRA’S RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- PERFORMANCE, PERFORMATIVITY AND NOMADISM IN VIKRAM CHANDRA’S RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- CONCLUSION / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- BIBLIOGRAPHY / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English -- INDEX / Editors Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English.