Open AccessA Critical Analysis of the Eurocentric Dimensions of Ghose's Aesthetic Views
Author(s) -
Asma Aftab
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
global social sciences review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2616-793X
pISSN - 2520-0348
DOI - 10.31703/gssr.2021(vi-i).23
Subject(s) - identity (music) , subjectivity , polyphony , alienation , admiration , argument (complex analysis) , epistemology , psychology , sociology , psychoanalysis , philosophy , literature , aesthetics , social psychology , art , biochemistry , chemistry , political science , law
The present article has attempted to discuss the essential Eurocentrism of the Anglophone Pakistani writer Zulfikar Ghose that has shaped his subjective identity as well as literary outlook. The argument has used Frantz Fanon's theorization about the colonized intellectual whose exposure to foreign culture engenders anxiety and eventually becomes a precondition for his cognitive maturation. However, reading Ghose's prose, we find no traces of any such conflict in his subjective and artistic expression as he chooses to call himself a native-alien with an ambivalence which, turns many times, into an alienation, even outright rejection of his native identity as an Indian-Pakistani. The article concludes that instead of coming to terms with his native subjectivity, Ghose's voice remains Eurocentric as it is predominantly based on an explicit admiration and identification with the dominant English culture and his simultaneous distance from his native culture and its historical memory.