Translating Kali's Feast: The Goddess in Indo-Caribbean Ritual and FictionTranslating Kali's Feast is an interdisciplinary study of the Goddess Kali bringing together ethnography and literature within the theoretical framework of translation studies. The idea for the book grew out of the experience and fieldwork of the authors, who lived with Indo-Caribbean devotees of the Hindu Goddess in Guyana. Using a variety of discursive forms including oral history and testimony, field notes, songs, stories, poems, literary essays, photographic illustrations, and personal and theoretical reflections, it explores the cultural, aesthetic and spiritual aspects of the Goddess in a diasporic and cross-cultural context. With reference to critical and cultural theorists including Walter Benjamin and Julia Kristeva, the possibilities offered by Kali (and other manifestations of the Goddess) as the site of translation are discussed in the works of such writers as Wilson Harris, V.S. Naipaul and R.K. Narayan. The book articulates perspectives on the experience of living through displacement and change while probing the processes of translation involved in literature and ethnography and postulating links between 'rite' and 'write, ' Hindu 'leela' and creole 'play.' The author wrote the description of the Big Puja (namely chapter 9, 10, 11, and 13) and the Guyana Kali Puja Lexicon (chapter 17) in collaboration with Guyanese scholar Karna Singh. |
Contents
3 | |
Madrasi Religion in Guyana | 11 |
Thinking Through the Gap | 25 |
The Devouring Mother in Wilson Harris and V S Naipaul | 37 |
Naipauls Indian Darkness Narayans Stone Gayatri | 49 |
Gardens Groves and Other Places and Spaces in Narayans Novels | 87 |
Goddesses Ghosts and Translatability in Jonestown | 93 |
Prologue to the Feast | 111 |
The Sacred Garden | 127 |
Night Interlude | 137 |
Tribute | 149 |
Vision | 155 |
Translation Ethnography and Literature | 167 |
Translating Kalis Feast | 185 |
193 | |
The Awakening of Mother | 119 |
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Common terms and phrases
abject afterlife Afzal-Khan allegory anthropologist Beti Big Puja Biswas Blairmont Blairmont Temple body Caribbean chora Clifford coconut colonial coolie Creole cross-cultural cultural dance death deities desire devatas devotees discourse divine drum dye water ecstasy English Teacher ethnographer experience festival fiction flowers Ganga Geertz genre goat Guyana Guyanese healing Hindi Hindu Hindu Mother Goddess Imagination Indian Indo-Caribbean Jagan Jonestown Journey of Oudin Kali Puja Kalimai karagam karagam boys Kateri Krishna Kristeva leading pujari literary literature London lotus Madrasi manifestation Margayya Mariamma marlo pujaris memory mode Mother Goddess murti Narayan narrative neem leaves novel original Painter of Signs play postcolonial priest pujaris pure language R.K. Narayan Raman Ramayana Ramprasad Sen religion religious rhythm ritual sacred sacrifice seeks Shanti Shiva signifying social space spirit Stephanides story symbolic order Tamil tappu tradition translation V.S. Naipaul Vendor of Sweets village Walter Benjamin Wilson Harris womb writing
Popular passages
Page 7 - It is not the object of the story to convey a happening per se, which is the purpose of information; rather, it embeds it in the life of the storyteller in order to pass it on as experience to those listening.
References to this book
Critical Journeys: The Making of Anthropologists Geert De Neve,Dr Maya Unnithan-Kumar No preview available - 2012 |