Full-text resources of CEJSH and other databases are now available in the new Library of Science.
Visit https://bibliotekanauki.pl

PL EN


2015 | 17: Crossing over “on the Birds’ Wings”: South Asian Literature in Local and Global Contexts | 85-111

Article title

From the Other One to the Only One Prabha Khaitan and Her Autobiography

Title variants

Languages of publication

EN

Abstracts

EN
The article examines autobiography of Prabha Khaitan with reference to plausible global and cross-regional inspirations, and studies the narrative to track down some of the author’s individual strategies of constructing the narrative self. Prabha Khaitan enters into a discussion with autobiographical texts of global and cross-regional importance. Apart from being a prolific Hindi writer, she combined multiple roles of a feminist, an intellectual, an entrepreneur, and a philanthropist in her lifetime. Her autobiography reveals various, often contradictory, identities illustrating thus a fairly liminal and dynamic positioning of a woman in the contemporary Indian society, which results from the interaction of various factors. Khaitan accounts her life as that of a rebel against social norms and breaks ‘the aesthetics of silence’ (Ritu Menon’s concept) imposed on women of her class and caste. She both challenges and to some extent complies with the dominant orthodox discourse on womanhood by introducing the imagery of the archetypical female divinity, both Satī and Śakti, which also explores much more subtle and entwined coexistence of women’s submission and subversion.

Contributors

  • Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań)

References

  • Browarczyk, M. 2013. The Intimate Me in the Public Sphere: Contemporary Hindi Autobiographies by Women. In: CEENIS. Current Research Papers. Warsaw: Elipsa.
  • Cavarero, A. 2000. Relating Narratives. Storytelling and Selfhood. London– New York: Routledge.
  • Das, K. 1977. My Story. Bangalore: Ind-Us.
  • Eakin, J. P. 1992. Touching the World. Reference in Autobiography. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Gilmore, L. 2001. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony.Ithaca: Cornell University Press. hooks, b. 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End.
  • Huddart, D. 2008. Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography. Routledge: New York.
  • Hunt, S. B. 2014. Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation. New Delhi: Routledge.
  • Khaitan, P. 2008. Anyā se ananyā. Nayī Dillī: Rājkamal Prakāśan.
  • Khaitan, P. 2013. A Life Apart. An Autobiography. Transl. Ira Pande. New Delhi: Zubaan.
  • Lim, S. G. 1988. Terms of Empowerement in Kamala Das’s My Story. In: S. Smith and J. Watson. De-Colonising the Subject in Women’s Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Long, J. 1999. Telling Women Lives: Subject/Narration/Reader/Text. New York: New York University Press.
  • Lynch, C. 2010. Trans-genre Confusion. What does autobiography think it is? In: R. Bradford (ed.). Life Writing. Essays on Autobiography, Biography and Literature. New York: Macmillian.
  • McClintock, A. 2010. Simone (Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand) de Beauvoir. In: G. Stade (ed.). European Writers: The Twentieth Century. Vol. 12. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990. Literature Resource Center. Online version: 2010. http://www.english.wisc.edu/amcclintock/beauvoir. htm, accessed on: 15.11.2015.
  • Menon R. 2011. Respectability. Hindi Writers’ Workshop. Online: www.wworld. org/programs/regions/india/respectability.htm, accessed on 15.11.2015
  • MacIntyre, A. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Philosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
  • Mody, P. 2008. The Intimate State. Love-Marrieg and the Law in Delhi. New Delhi: Routledge.
  • Nijhawan, Sh. 2012. Women and Girls in Hindi Public Sphere. Periodical Literature in Colonial North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
  • Pande, I. 2005. Diddi. My Mother’s Voice. Delhi: Penguin Books.
  • Pollock, Sh. (ed.). 2003. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Berkley: University of California Press.
  • Pritam, A. 1988. Rasīdī Ṭikaṭ. Delhi: Hind Pākeṭ Buks.
  • Pritam, A. 2005. Akṣārõ ke Sāye. Delhi: Rājpāl.
  • Rāje, S. 2003. Hindī sāhitya kā ādhā itihās (Half a History of Hindi Literature). Nāī Dillī: Bhāratīy Jñānpīţh.
  • Smith, S. and J. Watson. 2001. Reading Autobiography. A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis–London: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Smith, D. 2005. Beauvoir and Sartre, and a Book in Dispute. New York Times 29.09.2005.
  • Spivak, G. 1989. The Political Economy of Women as Seen by a Literary Critic. In: E. Weed (ed.). Coming To Terms. Feminism, Theory, Politics. New York: Routledge.
  • Varma, B. 2002. Women’s Urge for Expression: Perception on Autobiography: Amrita Iritam, Kamala Das, Jean Rhys. In: A. Monti and R. K. Dhawan. Discussing Indian Women Writers. New Delhi: Prestige: 51–65.
  • Weed, E. (ed.). 1989. Coming to Terms Feminism, Theory, Politics. New York: Routledge.

Document Type

Publication order reference

Identifiers

YADDA identifier

bwmeta1.element.desklight-e1a4186e-d902-4b77-bcc5-cac776155116
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.