Prose of the World: Modernism and the Banality of Empire

249 Pages·2013·5.93 MB·English

by  Saikat Majumdar

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“Prose of the World is an enormously compelling and vivid study. It shows a
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convincingly that the experience of colonial banality was a principal
continued froM front flap
engine of literary modernism. Bringing a transnational perspective to the
everyday life
Majumdar asks us to rethink the history of twentieth-century Anglophone fiction, Majumdar provincializes in the
of the
assumption that banality merely modernism by putting its aesthetic celebration of the ordinary into far outposts of empire can be
saikat MajuMdar
indicates an aesthetic failure. If conversation with the geopolitics of crushing boredom. The result is an P static, empty of the excitement
narrative is traditionally enabled ambitious, timely, and eloquent account of the relationship between early- r of progress. A pervading sense
twentieth-century fiction and the contemporary global novel in English.”
by the tremor, velocity, and o of banality and boredom are,
excitement of the event, the —reBecca l. WalkoWitz, Rutgers University, therefore, common elements
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historical and affective lack author of Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation of the daily experience for people
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implied by the banal produces living on the colonial periphery.
“There are many impressive things in this book: it provides us with a of
a narrative force that is radically Saikat Majumdar suggests that
powerful rethinking of the vexed relationship between empire and t ModernisM
new precisely because it suspends h this impoverished affective
modernism, an unprecedented probing of the internal logic of the e
the conventional impulses of W experience of colonial modernity
modernist movement, and a smart meditation on the role of the ordinary
and the
narration. significantly shapes the innovative
and banal in the making of the language of modernism.”
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aesthetics of modernist fiction.
—siMon Gikandi, Princeton University r Banality
Prose of the World explores the
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saikat MajuMdar “Beautifully written and evidence of a fine intelligence, this book offers d of eMpire global life of this narrative
a striking and important intervention in ongoing debates in both aesthetic, from late-colonial
is an assistant professor of English
modernist and postcolonial studies. As such, it will be a point of modernism to the present day,
at Stanford University and the
discussion and reference for quite a long time.”
focusing on a writer each from
author of a novel, Silverfish.
—enda duffy, University of California, Santa Barbara, Ireland, New Zealand, South
author of The Speed Handbook: Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism Africa, and India. Ranging from
James Joyce’s deflated epiphanies
“This well-informed, searching study throws new light on the literary
to Amit Chaudhuri’s disavowal
consequences of empire. Its insightful account of the experience
of the grand spectacle of
of boredom and banality on the political and cultural periphery,
postcolonial national allegories,
and of writers’ responses to this experience, will be valued by
Majumdar foregrounds the banal
all those interested in the global transformations of modernism
as a key instinct of modern and
and the relation between artistic creativity and colonial hegemony.”
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contemporary fiction—one that
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—derek attridGe, University of York
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jacket iMaGe: © plainpicture/Arcaid printed in the u.s.a.
jacket desiGn: Lisa Hamm coluMBia university press • New york continued on Back flap
Prose of the World

Saikat Majumdar
Prose of the World
MODERNISM AND THE BANALITY OF EMPIRE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2013 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Majumdar, Saikat.
Prose of the world : modernism and the banality of empire /
Saikat Majumdar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-231-15694-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-231-52767-5 (e-book)
1. Commonwealth fiction (English)—20th century—History and criticism.
2. Banality (Philosophy) in literature. 3. Place (Philosophy) in literature.
4. Narration (Rhetoric). 5. Literature and society—Commonwealth countries—
History—20th century. I. Title.
PR9080.5.M35 2013
823'.909—dc23 2012014234
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable
acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design: Lisa Hamm Cover image: © plainpicture/Arcaid
References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the
author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have
expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
For Subho
h

Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and
boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an
attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native
would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some natives—most
natives in the world—cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too
poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives . . . so
when the natives see you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and
boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into
a source of pleasure for yourself.
—Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

Contents
Introduction: Poetics of the Prosaic 1
1. James Joyce and the Banality of Refusal 37
2. Katherine Mansfield and the Fragility
of Pākehā Boredom 71
3. The Dailiness of Trauma and Liberation
in Zoë Wicomb 101
4. Amit Chaudhuri and the Materiality of the Mundane 135
Epilogue: The Uneventful 169
Acknowledgments 181
Notes 185
Bibliography 209
Index 221