Perpetuating the orientalist discourse in Arundhati Roy's the God of small things and Mariama Ba's So long of Letter

Abstract

The present research work investigates the theme of the perpetuation of the Orientalist discourse in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (1997) and Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter (1989). It analyzes the two works in the light of Edward's Said theory of Orientalism and Gayatri Spivak's notion of subalternity, focusing mainly on the oppression worked out on the two novels' subaltern figures and the Orientalist images of backwardness, cultural inferiority as well as religious tyranny the two novels let slip. The research foregrounds the Orientalist stereotypical images the two authors deploy in their representation and criticism of the socio-cultural ethos and religious values of their cultures, focusing on the notion of caste and social stratification typical to the Indian society in Arundhati Roy's text, and on the notion of religious totalitarianism characteristic of Senegalese Islam in Mariama Ba's narrative. The research work reads both texts as examples of Orientalism and identifies the two authors as perpetuating Western Orientalist clichés in third world cultural and religious context