Otherness

As its title suggests, place and space figure heavily in Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest novel, “The Lowland.” The reader finds herself journeying from the craggy shores of Rhode Island, to the bustling streets of Post-independence India, and finally in the hyacinth filled pools of the titular lowland area of Tollygunge, Calcutta. It is here that the mystery and tragedy of Lahiri’s novel takes place, a compassionate tale of family, betrayal, and political ideology set against the backdrop of the Naxalite…

September 11 is a critical day in the American history. The violent hijacks of 9/11 changed America and the world as well politically, socially, and economically. Since the fall of the Twin Towers, America realized that it has to confront a new furious enemy called terrorism. Stacy Suver, a critic of American literature, affirms that the hijacks of September 11defined terrorism in a direct way as a kind of “communication” that intends to deliver a message about power “between the perpetrator of…

4.2 Etiquette, Courtesy and Behavior A good man does not argue. He who argues is not a good man. – Lao Tzu, Father of Taoism, a sixth century B.C. Chinese philosopher. Life is short. But there is always time enough for a simple courtesy, a small talk or a little etiquette. Etiquette is a nice little art. One can forgive you for the murder but not for your impoliteness. A man is known by the way he behaves, with people especially with people at perceived lower rank than he is. It is a common…

1.1 Why Postcolonialism? It is difficult to say what postcolonialism exactly is. There is no ‘tradition’ per se as there is a philosophical tradition for deconstruction or psychoanalytical theory. In anti-colonial movements and postmodern critique of colonialism as a project of modernity one can find ideas that preceded postcolonial theory. The most important feature of postcolonialism is a shift in the dominant ways in which relations between Western and non-Western people and their worlds were…