Quest for Another “New Literature”: Poetic Contours of Northeast India

Abstract

The word “new” denotes anything that is not old. If the “oldness” in “old” is missing in “new”, the concept “new” inherits something absent in it. The journey of “new” thus begins in deficiency. What is the lack? Is it the lack of something that gives “old” the attribution of affluence? If so, the “new” in the context of literature can encompass instances of marginality which lacks what gives “old” its centrality or authority. “New” poetry of marginality lacks the centrifugal tendency which is its paucity, and at the same time, its potentiality for insubordinate “becoming.” The concept of the “new” can be perceived as giving impetus to some optimistic spur that destabilizes the old and can be immensely promising. Thus “new” is both a deficit and a surplus—newness intensifies the problematic transition that is a qualifier of epistemic and ideological cataclysm. “New” literature, in so far as perceived from postcolonial perspective, emerged as a reaction to the Eurocentric, and then Nationalist, hegemony that predominated the cultural scenario. The propaganda of superiority of Western culture which Derrida calls “white mythology” requires its opposition for its sustenance and hence the binary the West and the rest. The repressive binary had long dominated the literary discourse in which the West was considered to be superior, rational and civilized while rendering the rest (especially Asia and Africa) to be inferior, childish and barbaric. The “orientalist” formulation was detrimental to the attempt at self-realization of the colonized people who had been represented so far by the West. Nationalist movements which were instrumental in fighting for and achieving independence of the colonies soon bred disillusionment among the people. Nationalism ironically did not replace the oppressive and suppressive mechanisms of the colonizers, rather, continued their hegemonic legacy in silencing the voices of the lower classes, lower castes, tribals and women—all of whom constitute the social subaltern section.