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.' |
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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 | 69 |
Is Shakti Shanti? | 87 |
Goddesses Ghosts and Translatability in Jonestown | 93 |
Tribute | 149 |
Return to Secular Life | 153 |
Vision | 155 |
Guyana Kali Puja Lexicon | 157 |
Translating Culture | 165 |
Translation Ethnography and Literature | 167 |
Translation ethnography and literature | 168 |
Translator ethnographer and author | 172 |
The Feast and Festivities of Mother Kali | 108 |
Prologue to the Feast | 111 |
The Awakening of Mother | 119 |
The Sacred Garden | 127 |
Night Interlude | 137 |
Feast and Festivity | 141 |
Translation and postcolonial identity | 175 |
Translation and Caribbean culture | 181 |
Translating Kalis Feast | 185 |
193 | |
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Common terms and phrases
associated become beginning Benjamin Big Puja Biswas body brings called Caribbean colonial comes concept crossing cultural dance death deities desire devatas devotees discussion divine drum English ethnographer experience expression feast festival fiction figure flowers force give goat Goddess Guyana hand Harris healing Hindu House human Imagination Indian journey Kali Kali's karagam language leading leaves literary literature living London manifestation marks marlo Master meaning memory mode Mother Mother Goddess Mother Kali Naipaul Narayan narrative nature night notion novel object offerings original Oudin past performance play possibility postcolonial practice present pujaris reading referred religion religious represents reveals rhetoric rhythm ritual river sacred seeks Shiva signifying social society space speaks spirit story Studies suggests sweet symbolic takes Tamil task tells temple tradition translation turn village vision worship 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 |