Abstract

The Postcolonial Paradoxes in Kiran Desai's ‘The Inheritance of Loss’

Dr M. Suchitra, Dr. Yachamaneni Jayanthi

Volume: 15 Issue: 4 2025

Abstract:

The Inheritance of Loss (2006) by Kiran Desai depicts the colonial hierarchies that continue to afflict globalization in the late 20th century. Through parallel storylines in Kalimpong and New York, Desai is concerned with several aspects such as, mimicry, linguistic alienation, racialization, class stratification, and they fit precarious lives for the subaltern in times of insurgency and undocumented migration. The article based on Said’s Orientalism, Bhabha’s hybridity and mimicry, Spivak’s subaltern critique as well as the application of Appadurai globalization framework demonstrates how the characters as Jemubhai Patel (the Judge), Sai, Biju, and Gyan experience contradictory subject positions that are created through imperial memory and neoliberal mobility. The novel's final clue is that "inheritance" for this novel is actually also a double will, aspirated Anglophilia, and consolidated inequality, both ending in structuring antagonisms-losses-of home, language, dignity, and futurity.

Back Download

References

• Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso.
• Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttt9dx
• Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1220n6w
• Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203820551
• Boehmer, E. (2005). Colonial and postcolonial literature: Migrant metaphors (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
• Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard University Press.
• Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power (J. B. Thompson, Ed.; G. Raymond & M. Adamson, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
• Chambers, R. (1991). Room for maneuver: Reading (the) oppositional (in) narrative. University of Chicago Press.
• Chatterjee, P. (1993). The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691214530
• Desai, K. (2006). The inheritance of loss. Grove Press.
• Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks (C. L. Markmann, Trans.). Grove Press.
• Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality: Volume 1, An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). Vintage Books.
• Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Vintage Books.
• Loomba, A. (1998). Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203823125
• Roy, A. (2003). City requiem, city solitude: Urbanizing Kolkata. University of Minnesota Press.
• Roy, A. (2010). Poverty capital: Microfinance and the making of development. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203854716
• Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Vintage Books.
• Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and imperialism. Alfred A. Knopf.
• Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. Yale University Press.
• Sinha, M. (1995). Colonial masculinity: The ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ in the late nineteenth century. Manchester University Press.
• Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). University of Illinois Press.
• Spivak, G. C. (1990). Globalization and the politics of translation. In S. Harasym (Ed.), The post-colonial critic: Interviews, strategies, dialogues (pp. 71–102). Routledge.
• Viswanathan, G. (1989). Masks of conquest: Literary study and British rule in India. Columbia University Press.