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Riddles of Belonging: India in Translation and Other Tales of Possession

Online ISBN:
9780823241064
Print ISBN:
9780823229550
Publisher:
Fordham University Press
Book

Riddles of Belonging: India in Translation and Other Tales of Possession

Christi A. Merrill
Christi A. Merrill
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan
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Published:
15 April 2008
Online ISBN:
9780823241064
Print ISBN:
9780823229550
Publisher:
Fordham University Press

Abstract

Can the subaltern joke? The author answers by invoking riddling, oral-based fictions from Hindi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, and Urdu that dare to laugh at what traditions often keep hidden — whether spouse abuse, ethnic violence, or the uncertain legacies of a divinely wrought sex change. She uses these examples to investigate the expectation that translated work should allow the non-English-speaking subaltern to speak directly to the English-speaking reader. She plays with the trope of speaking to argue against treating a translated text as property, as a singular material object to be carried across. She refigures translation as a performative telling in turn, from the Hindi word anuvad, to explain how a text might be multiply possessed. She thereby challenges the distinction between original and derivative, fundamental to nationalist and literary discourse, humoring our melancholic fixation on what is lost. Instead, she offers strategies for playing along with the subversive wit found in translated texts. Sly jokes and spirited double entendres, she suggests, require equally spirited double hearings. The playful lessons offered by these narratives provide insight into the networks of transnational relations connecting us across a sea of differences. Generations of multilingual audiences in India have been navigating this Ocean of the Stream of Stories since before the 11th century, arriving at a fluid sense of commonality across languages.

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