I know this blog is a bit later than most peoples, but up until now I really hadn’t formulated something I thought was worthy of posting. Even now I am unsure as to the importance of what I’m about to say. While reading Imaginary Homelands I was able to tell Rushdie was fluent in English due the fluidity of the piece. It wasn’t necessarily the most interesting thing to read, but it was easily understandable. I actually enjoyed reading the part of the essay about creating a hybrid world between the two cultures, and the difficulties of things such as language barriers. He admits that his past is almost foreign to him, but he admits the necessity of knowing your past and your roots, as well as knowing about other cultures, their customs, and their histories. As a history major I can easily relate to that sentiment, because the ways of the world and the past interests me greatly. That is partly why I took this course; I figured it might be more interesting than a generic Lit course that focused on something I already knew. In fact my biggest struggle so far has been with The Home and the World because of the translation, which was not an issue for this piece.
Praising Rushdie for his fluency in English is to insult him :)
ReplyDeleteI am glad you found a point of interest in the essay: in our incredibly global world "hybrid cultures" is the way of the future. Rushdie's essay is actually a very good and easily relatable way to understand a point that Tagore's novel is also making -- any idea of "homeland" or "nation" or "national identity" is necessarily imaginary. Can you see how Sandip is making up his "motherland" as he goes along? Do you find that Nikhil also, in his way, locates his understanding of the nation in a different place? - the people. As the Presidential elections come closer and closer you will hear a lot of talk about "the American nation" -- see if you can hear the rhetoric of the imaginary in it.
Sandip appeared to be a very whimsical character, who was fueled by passion for his percieved country, as well as an almost juvenile anger when it concerned getting his way. I feel like Sandip was most concerned with the percieved "motherland" itself, where as Nikhil was most concernned with the people the land contained. If party politics were more prominent in 1907 Bangladesh, Sandip and Nikhil would certainly be on opposing sides. I will make a point to listen to modern politics to see if I can find andy parallels.
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