Editorial»
Theorizing ourselves at Kupondol
JAN 16 - I had an opportunity to attend a seminar
on literary and cultural theory last
week. Organised by Liza, a poetry forum of Nepal Bhasa at Kupondol, the seminar brought together people from a variety of professional and social backgrounds. There were, for example, Dwarika Shrestha, a writer, thinker and businessman, and Dhuswan Sayami, the author of many celebrated novels. Also, I met Bhagat Das Shrestha, a politician and a journalist as also many other poets and writers like Rina Tuladhar, Navin Chitrakar, Narmadeshwor Pradhan, Bhusan Shrestha, Dr Keshabman Shrestha, Dhruva Adhikari, Loktara Tuladhar and Rasa among others. The central department of English was well represented too with Professor Shreedhar Lohani coordinating the event and Dr Arun Gupto, Yuvraj Katuwal, Bisnu Sapkota, Hari Adhikari and myself making presentations on contemporary theories such as Deconstruction, Reader response theory, Psychoanalytical theory, New historicism, Cultural studies and Postcolonial theory.
While the seminar had its high moments I became painfully aware that the presenters - including myself - were struggling to bridge the gap that separated our theoretical reflections from the actual writing practices of poetry and fiction writers. Dwarika Shrestha hammered the nail home when he asked if it was really necessary for the creative writers to understand what deconstruction or structural psychoanalysis is. Writers like Albert Camu and Jean Paul Sartre, after all, were able to produce great literature and explore the existential fallen-ness of humanity without studying cultural theory. Swagat Nepal, a journalist, had a different kind of question. He had written a poem to rewrite the famous adage of King Prithvinarayan who had said that Nepal was a living root caught between two immense boulders, the geopolitical giants India and China. Swagat argued that while our neighbors - the seemingly inert, inorganic boulders - had grown and prospered, the organic living root of Nepal had failed to swell and expand. From such a perspective it was more appropriate to describe Nepal as a small stone between two huge roots; a stone that remains in a fallen condition of political chaos and economic underdevelopment while its neighbors have flourished. After explaining his poem Swagat asked me if his poem could be understood as being written under the sign of “deconstruction.”
As I listened to these comments it seemed to me that we were making a mistake by considering cultural theories as systems of writing. All theories - from New Criticism to New Historicism - are not systems of writing but rather practices of reading and interpretation. It is of course not necessary to understand deconstruction or new historicism to produce authentic literary texts. Writers from Shakespeare to Camu, and from Devkota to Dhuswan Sayami have produced literary gems without studying the logic of base/ superstructure model. What these theories do, however, is the job of producing multiple perspectives of reading. They allow us to read - not write - various types of cultural texts such as novels, films, poems, political speeches, legal document ~ ~ , religious performances and television programs from new, sometimes unexpected angles. While Sartre and Camu produced great literature without being familiar with the “modern” ways of reading such as structuralism or feminism, it seems to me that they had at their disposal other models of reading - other theories - like Existentialism and humanism, for example. It is through these other theories that they read and interpreted the world, and then wrote their classics on the basis of such “prior” reading. This is to say that all writing proceeds from reading. In other words, cultural theory helps writers by allowing them to “read” the world from new angles of perception. Such new perceptions often become part of the subconscious of the writers and thus shape writing in an indirect, rather than a direct manner.
Times have changed and deconstruction and cultural studies have replaced existentialism and humanism as newer modes of reading. Fifty years from now still newer theories might join them. Ways of reading and interpretation keep on multiplying, and, as far as I am concerned, such a multiplication is only to be welcomed. New ways of reading do not invalidate older ways of reading but simply keep on adding new possibilities of perception, positions from which to make sense of both the world and our own relationship to it.
As talks turned towards the issues of globalisation Bhagat Das Shrestha asked a question that has become a major passion of his life. Why can’t we abolish national borders that divide human beings from each other, he asked, What national and economic motivations control the boundaries of the nation and determine who under what circumstances gets to cross those boundaries? As I listened to Bhagat Shrestha I realised that he was raising theoretical questions even without reading the essays of Homi Bhabha or Frederick Jameson concerning globalisation. Swagat’s poem that reconceived of Nepal as an inorganic, inert stone was similarly posing crucial theoretical queries regarding global affairs. Beyond the two immense roots surrounding beautiful stony inert Nepal were other roots and vegetables. There were other well-grown national potato and orange gardens, other polities of great technological and economic growth. The stony wasteland of Nepal was at the global bottom, and all of us at the Kupondol seminar were trying to theorise our own fallen-ness - politico-economic rather than existential - from such a global bottom of political inertia and economic underdevelopment. From such a perspective, each one of us - whether we were trained in theory or not - were talking and thinking like theorists during the course of the seminar. All of us were trying to understand new ways of reading, writing and thinking about the world, and to theorise our own position of fallen-ness in such a world.Posted on: 2004-01-17 04:15
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