This dissertation examines what I refer to as the politics of multiculturalism and the politics of friendship as represented in five texts: Rudyard Kipling's Kim, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, Meera Syal's novel Anita and Me, Syal's film adaptation Anita and Me, and Gurinder Chadha's film Bend it Like Beckham. I argue these texts are dialogically engaged with larger political discourses concerning race relations, anticipating or problematizing contemporary multiculturalist debates and practices. I read the theme of interracial friendship, prioritized in all five texts, as a strategic narrative device through which larger political questions of race relations get played out. The colonial novels suggest friendship as a potential antidote to interracial tensions, but show (albeit inadvertently in Kim) how it cannot induce a future egalitarian world if one race rules another. In doing so, these novels anticipate multiculturalist discourses, which celebrate diverse cultures but do nothing to address the political inequalities of racialized peoples. The British-Asian texts already assume the futility of multiculturalist celebrations of cultural diversity as a means for progressive race relations and disrupt ideals of fraternal friendship that overlook cultural difference for the sake of social harmony. Even so, these texts still express the necessity of building connections between diverse peoples. Through various narrative strategies, I argue they promote the notion of political friendship, which supports the enunciation not elision of cultural difference, negotiating rather than avoiding the terrain of uneven, incommensurable differences between peoples and cultures to move toward a more promising future. . / English
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/1579 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Kattekola, Lara V. Virginia |
| Contributors | Joyce, Joyce Ann, 1949-, Singh, Amritjit, Williams, Roland Leander, Jhala, Jayasinhji |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 268 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/1561, Theses and Dissertations |
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