Post Colonial English Language Writers

Will written, keep it up.

After Aravind Adiga’s Booker, will it be the Turner Prize for Runa Islam?

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081018/jsp/frontpage/story_9985569.jsp



UK race? Look for a ‘home’ link
AMIT ROY

Runa Islam
London, Oct. 17: After Aravind Adiga’s Booker, will it be the Turner Prize for Runa Islam? Is the empire striking back, not in business, which is so passé, but in the world of arts?

The question may be worth asking following the nomination of Runa Islam, a 38-year-old Bangladeshi, for Britain’s cutting edge arts award.

Many think the Turner Prize is more about shocking and less about art but nevertheless it is eagerly anticipated and much sought after by the artists themselves.

Those who win the Turner — Anish Kapoor in 1991 and Damien Hirst in 1995, for example — go on to become household names and very rich indeed.

So it may be with Runa Islam if she wins on December 1 when the name of the chosen one is announced live on Channel 4 in the manner of the Booker. Even her nomination has lifted her from relative obscurity.

“This year’s Turner Prize shortlist has been announced and the controversial art show has delivered yet another quirky line-up,� one critic noted. “A naked shop dummy sitting on the loo, a woman smashing china, a collection of dirty cereal bowls and a video featuring Homer Simpson have all made the cut.�

She added: “The nominated artists vying for the prestigious award, bestowed on an artist under 50, born or based in Britain are Cathy Wilkes, Goshka Macuga, Mark Leckey and Runa Islam. For the first time in a decade, three of the four nominated artists competing for the £25,000 prize are women.�

The critic pointed out: “Known for its history of controversy, the art prize has produced unusual and shocking past exhibits including Martin Reed’s empty room with the lights switching on and off, Damien Hirst’s cow and calf cut in half and preserved in formaldehyde and Chris Ofili’s elephant dung canvasses.�

She also said: “The 2008 Turner Prize nominations include Runa Islam’s ‘Be The First To see What You see As You see It’, footage of a smartly-dressed woman throwing pieces of crockery to the floor.�

According to the Tate, which runs the Turner Prize, Runa Islam was born in Dhaka in 1970. She studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (1997-8) and the Royal College of Art, London (2002-4).

She has been nominated for her solo exhibition Centre of Gravity at Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen and National Museum of Art, Oslo.

The Tate says: “Runa Islam is fascinated by the ability of film to capture something existing beyond physical space. Her film installations explore the content and apparatus of film, exposing its technical processes to reveal the inherently illusory nature of the medium, yet preserving its magic. They assert that the internal and external codes of cinema cannot be separated.�

It adds: “Location, action, shot and installation, apparatus and dialogue with the viewer are all agents in the production of light and illusion. She carefully choreographs these elements in open ended, counter narrative frameworks and composed installations that are conceptually based but at the same time emotionally charged. Whilst visually lyrical, underwritten by their conceptual foundations they are an investigation into the technology of film and the possibilities of representation.�

The Tate explains that the “Turner Prize is a contemporary art award that was set up in 1984 to celebrate new developments in contemporary art. The prize is awarded each year to ‘a British artist under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding’. Nominations are invited each year, and the prize is judged by an independent jury that changes annually.�

It also says: “Over the last two decades the Turner Prize has played a significant role in provoking debate about visual art and the growing public interest in contemporary British art in particular, and has become widely recognised as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe.�

Perhaps easiest to comprehend is Runa Islam’s evocative image of a group of relaxed rickshawallahs on the first of spring, 2005.

[A decade on, however, the case is strikingly different, and something very remarkable is clearly happening in Pakistani writing. The irony is that the same jihadi outrages and military interventions that have held Pakistan back so badly in its political life, and which censored its early poets and novelists, have now provided an embarrassment of riches for its more recent writers, who thanks to General Zia, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, have seen their nation move from the periphery to the very focus of world geopolitics.]

William, I know you like to put in a generous coat of your own romanticized and “O what a great horse!� type of wishful interpretation of events but the real reasons for the (re)emergence of Pakistani authorship over the last ten years are a lot simpler and down-to-earth. There are two:

(1) Mushy was no Zia. He tried to leave the media alone as long as it posed no danger to his own rule. There was then more room for creativity to thrive. Mullahs became fair game even though the khakis (and even more so the ISI-wallahs) remained untouchable sacred cows! That situation has not changed. The bucketfuls of sweat which fall from the brows of Pakistani readers on this site every time the term ISI gets mentioned is ample testimony to that fact.

(2) The evolution and wholesale adoption of the internet has made it virtually impossible to retain the type of control which the Zia considered his God-granted baapauti (ownership)!

....there are some ok to good writers, emerging from pakistan, now........amongst writers of pakistani origin, nadeem aslam is head and shoulders above all others.....i think he is as good as any writer of south asian origin, at the moment.......

mohsin hamid would be second......however, his book reluctant fundamentalist has received far more publicity than it deserves.......probably because books covering the, "other view" on 9/11 are in hot demand now.....his first book was much better......

kamila shamsie is quite good.....though not very good.....her last book was extremely average.....bapsi sidhwa is also quite average......

but hands down, the best author from this region, at the moment, has to be khalid hussaini from afghanistan......he has written two books on afghanistan - the kite runner and a thousand splendid suns.......the later, perhaps, the best fiction work i have ever read.......

i think mr. dalrymple has a soft spot for pakistan.....in any case, he, himself, is my favorite non-fiction author covering south asia......him and dominique lappierre.....just finished city of djinns by dalrymple......and of course, the white mughals is a classic for the ages.....so much so that i ended up visiting hyderabad, after reading it......

Um ..white moghul was an atrocious piece of fiction about those gora babus working their way into a conquered land to acquire as many brown bibis and riches as possible.....

William firangi wrote that fiction with a Flashmanesque flourish.

Soft corner for Pakistanis! please read his flawed Princess!

I think he is a wonderful historian and yes he is baised towards ... truth!

thanks Chowk for posting this excellent and informative article; let's hope it encourages even more Pakistani writers in English to write fiction.

I agree Aslam is the best of the bunch; bought his new book but not read it yet.

Problems with Post-colonialism


What's wrong with the term post-colonial lit?

For some post-colonial critics, using the term "post-colonial" to describe anything leads a writer or critic into murky waters. What authors can be included in the post-colonial canon? Is looking at literature through a post-colonial lens Eurocentric, for it limits the significance of a nation to the time it was colonized?

In a paper posted on the Washington State University website, Paul Brians addresses the controversy surrounding the use of the term "post-colonial," arguing that "more it is examined, the more the postcolonial sphere crumbles. Though Jamaican, Nigerian, and Indian writers have much to say to each other; it is not clear that they should be lumped together." Brians does, however, admit that until a better term comes along, it's difficult to avoid the "post-colonial" tag when discussing literature that deals with the culture identity of formerly colonized nations.

All of this leads me to wonder - is post-colonialism a legitimate form of literary criticism? Certainly, the literary community must have the discussions that arise from questions post-colonial critics put forth. In the same way that Marxists for Feminists seek to examine texts through the minority perspectives, so too do the post-colonial critics.

While post-colonialism is undoubtedly a more controversial form of criticism than, say, Formalism, I tend to agree with Brians that until we can find better a better term or definition, we must continue to utilize the term "post-colonial criticism" in our studies, however reluctant we may in embracing that term. Objections can be raised to any form of literary criticism, and simply because post-colonial criticism might raise more questions is no reason to ignore the field altogether. We may be uncomfortable with the direction that post-colonialism takes us, but it doesn't make the journey any less vital to our own literary understanding.

William...
the writers like Arundhati Roy, Arvind Adiga etc. are just one book wonder. That too, their literature is like Mumbai Urdoooo movies (qualitatively very mediocre). The golden age of Indian literature was (upto 12th and 13th century) through Sanskrit. It revived for a century (1860-1960) in Bengal, through revival of Sanskrit....I am sure, the way regional languages (in India) and Sanskrit is pushed to the brink by subsequent central Govt.s, we are heading towards disaster....
For Pakis, everything is imported from middle-east ( Urdoooo, Arabic...). Moving further west should not be problem...