Research Commons
      • Browse 
        • Communities & Collections
        • Titles
        • Authors
        • By Issue Date
        • Subjects
        • Types
        • Series
      • Help 
        • About
        • Collection Policy
        • OA Mandate Guidelines
        • Guidelines FAQ
        • Contact Us
      • My Account 
        • Sign In
        • Register
      View Item 
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Research
      • Arts and Social Sciences
      • Arts and Social Sciences Papers
      • View Item
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Research
      • Arts and Social Sciences
      • Arts and Social Sciences Papers
      • View Item
      JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

      Girmit, postmemory, and Subramani

      Long, Maebh
      Thumbnail
      Files
      6. Maebh Long.pdf
      Published version, 352.2Kb
      Link
       ir.canterbury.ac.nz
      Find in your library  
      Citation
      Export citation
      Long, M. (2018). Girmit, postmemory, and Subramani. Pacific Dynamics: Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 2(2), 161–175.
      Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/13018
      Abstract
      The centenary of indenture in Fiji was celebrated with public displays, speeches, parades, and publications. The momentum for critical and creative response grew in tandem with the wave of publications inspired by the end of colonial rule in many Pacific Island countries. This period of increased agency and autonomy was also a time of political uncertainty in Fiji, as questions of the nation’s identity and direction were raised. For many Indo-Fijian writers rootedness in Fiji was voiced through the traumas of indenture, which they invested with mythic valence, and which can be understood as operating as an origin story for Indo-Fijians. Vijay Mishra considered indenture, or girmit, to be a foundational ideology for Indo-Fijian writers, but viewing girmit in terms of false consciousness leads him to read Indo-Fijian anxieties in terms of political blindness and cultural insularity. Building instead on Sudesh Mishra’s elaboration of girmit as non-agreement, and Vijay Mishra’s later revisions of girmit ideology as founded on memories of betrayal, this article argues that girmit can be productively understood through Marianne Hirsh’s work on postmemory. Looking at writings of the centenary, and in particular Subramani’s short stories, this article proposes that the traumas of girmit that haunt writings of the period do so as postmemories.
      Date
      2018
      Type
      Journal Article
      Rights
      This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
      Collections
      • Arts and Social Sciences Papers [1403]
      Show full item record  

      Usage

      Downloads, last 12 months
      52
       
       

      Usage Statistics

      For this itemFor all of Research Commons

      The University of Waikato - Te Whare Wānanga o WaikatoFeedback and RequestsCopyright and Legal Statement