Freitag
17
MAI

14.15 Uhr

From Fish to Moon

Traveling with the Nāmā across Plural Literary Cultures of Asia

Professor Ipshita Chanda (University of Hyderabad)

Abstract:
The nāmā is a text-name that traverses various forms of textual process spanning literally from fish to the moon, mimicking the wondrous journey of the Prophet in Farid-ud-din Attar’s Ilāhī-Nāmah (Book of God). This common text-name originates in the cultures of west Asia and enters the Indian subcontinent through contact with Islamicate cultures from Ghazna to Turkestan. This talk will explore the structuring effect that any text-name, generic markers, and repertoires of signification may have upon literary construction, undertaking our journey with the namah in the spirit of willing engagement with difference, not caring too much about the boundaries, borders, and identitarian studies that current literary theorizing seems to be concerned about. Rather, it asks whether the comparative frame of plurality and relationality does not better address the disregard shown by literary phenomena for the categories of thinking that currently regulate cultural contact and exchange, discerning instead the impulses that prompted cross-cultural hospitality and the exciting results that we can still contemplate as literature.

Professor Ipshita Chanda is the head of the Department of Comparative Literature at the English & Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad, India. She is the author of Packaging Freedom: Feminism and Popular Culture; Reception of the Received: A Case Study in Inter-Systemic Literary Reception; Tracing the Charit as a Genre; Selfing the City: Single Women Migrants and their Lives in Kolkata etc. Besides being a prolific translator of Indian literatures, having translated the works of Sukumar Ray, Mahashweta Devi, Satinath Bhaduri, and Phanishwar Nath Renu, she also has multiple edited volumes to her credit, including Literary Historiography; Locating Cultural Change: Theory, Method, Process; Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in Bengali Periodicals 1865-1947 (with Jayeeta Bagchi); Emotion, Expression and Aesthetics; and Literature and the Other Arts.

Adresse

Gebäude 4010

010.01.05 (Hörsaal)

Voßstraße 2

69115 Heidelberg

Veranstalter

SAI, Abt. Neusprachliche Südasienstudien

Kontakt

Sandra Joost