Violent Dis-Placements: Natural and Human Violence in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss

This article uses theories of space and place to explore the connections between natural and human violence in Kiran Desai's Booker Prize-winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006). By synthesizing concepts from the work of Bill Ashcroft, Benedict Anderson, Yi-Fu Tuan, Homi K. Bhabha, Michel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Commonwealth literature Vol. 44; no. 2; pp. 35 - 49
Main Author Ferguson, Jesse Patrick
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.06.2009
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
American literature
Desai, Kiran (1971- )
Indian literature
Literary criticism
Novels
Space
Theory
Violence
The Inheritance of Loss
violence in literature
Kiran Desai
Indo-American literature
Gorkha Nationalism
place and space
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Summary:This article uses theories of space and place to explore the connections between natural and human violence in Kiran Desai's Booker Prize-winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006). By synthesizing concepts from the work of Bill Ashcroft, Benedict Anderson, Yi-Fu Tuan, Homi K. Bhabha, Michel de Certeau, and others, I develop a theory of “placeness” that involves subjective attachment to a physical location, a range of emotional and intellectual investments that convert “empty” space to place. In Desai's novel, however, this transformation is reversible through violence. Just as nature undermines edifices, so too do humans use violence in order to degrade place to space in the hope of rebuilding place according to a different agenda.
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ISSN:0021-9894
1741-6442
DOI:10.1177/0021989409105117