Memory and Literature Series 2 - Milan Kundera, Yoko Ogawa and Saddat Hassan Manto

 

Part 1 - Milan Kundera & The Politics of Memory 

The French-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in the Czech Republic and has lived in France since 1975. Milan Kundera's works are about the political importance of memory. This can be termed as the 'politics of memory. Kundera's 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is a classic example of this. The central importance of both individual memory and collective memory is underlined in this novel. It is always the personal/collective vs the official. The reference to Clementis and Gottwald is an example. Even though Clementis was removed from the official document (except for his fur hat) he exists in the mind of the narrator. The official version makes the people forget 'the world at large forgets it faster' ( 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting' Page 218) The reference to Mirek in the second scene is the example of an individual trying to 'prevent the erasure of history through the vehicle of his memory' For him 'the preservation of memory is a way of resisting power' 

The ideas are summarised from: 

Berlatsky, Eric. “Memory as Forgetting: The Problem of the Postmodern in Kundera's ‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting’ and Spiegelman's ‘Maus.’” Cultural Critique, no. 55, 2003, pp. 101–151. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1354650. Accessed 18 Aug. 2021.

Part 2 - Yoko Ogawa and The Memory Police

The Memory Police is a dystopian novel set on an island that is overtaken by the epidemic of forgetting. The embodiment of this memory loss is found in the objects when they disappear. Objects disappear not just from memory but real life also. The book was published in the Japanese in the year 1994. The book was translated by Stephen Snyder and published in 2019. The disappearance of objects (memory) is enforced by Memory Police. Some of the objects that disappear are roses, birds, stamps, green beans etc. First, the object disappears and then the memory of that thing vanishes. The third stage is the memory of forgetting also disappears. The novel is narrated through the eyes of a nameless novelist. Her mother was a sculptor. The novelist is working on a novel where the protagonist is losing her voice. Each of the objects that disappear becomes a metaphor or a symbol. The birds represent freedom or flight. Roses represent desire and love. The ideas presented here are from the article which appeared in The New Yorker. 

You may read the full article by clicking on the link given below. https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-the-memory-police-makes-you-see

Part 3 - Saadat Hasan Manto 

He is described as the most widely read and the most controversial short-story writer in Urdu. His literary career spanned over two decades. He published twenty-two collections of short stories, one novel, five collections of radio plays, and three collections of essays. His greatest works were produced in the last seven years of his life. His life is inextricably linked to the Partition of 1947. He is also part of the research in Memory studies about the Partition. His love for the city of Bombay is well-known. He wrote mostly about the city. He wrote about prostitution, religious superstition, adolescent anxiety, sex, the Partition of India and Bombay cinema in the thirties and forties. For Manto, Bombay served as a direct material for his writing. James Joyce had Dublin, Saul Bellow had Chicago and for Manto it was Bombay. It is said that a writer like Manto could evoke his world with a single detail. The limp ten-rupee note in the story 'Ten Rupees' is an example. Manto is not taught wildly in schools, even though it was easy to understand him. He was locked up in the world of Urdu literature. When it comes to Manto's writing style, what is important is the word 'economy'. Like the great masters Pushkin, Gandhi and R.K Narayan. The quality of writing is something that makes Manto's writing powerful. In the story 'Ten Rupee', the detailed description of Bombay is not there, but 'the factory wall with the stench of urine is a powerful detail about the city. Manto admired and read the works of Manto admired and read the works of Guy de Maupassant. The ideas presented here is culled from the Introduction written by Aatish Taseer to the book - Manto - Selected Stories. Aatish Taseer has translated some of the stories by Manto.

Series 1 - Key Figures in Memory Studies

 

Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) 

He is a famous social scientist or sociologist. He died at the concentration camp at Buchenwald. He is influenced by Emile Durkheim. He interpreted social behaviour in terms of 'collective representations. Being a sociologist, he studied the wants and standard of living of workers. He realised that different collective representations characterised each social class. He is described as a man of rare attainment with a heart whose sensitivity rivalled its generosity' He is one social scientist who liked to keep himself informed by 'collecting and analysing the trends of public opinion. Maurice Halbwachs was permeated with a rare sense of social responsibility. He was imprisoned at a time when he was appointed the Chair of Social Psychology in the College dé France. He was also getting ready to do his research in that difficult field where Psychology and Sociology overlap. He was influenced by Henri Bergson. He was also inspired by Leibniz. He worked with Emile Durkheim. Halbwachs's thesis was titled 'The Working Class and the Standards of Living' His mind is described as a 'flexible one which was forever emancipated from a system'. His study of the industrial workers shows us that personal needs/ wants are in accordance with the theories of collective representation. Halbwachs differs from his teacher and improves upon him and is influenced by Marxist Sociology. Another notable work of Maurice Halbwach is the study on suicides which was published as 'The Cause of Suicide'. In this study, he proposed that Catholics have a lower suicide rate than Protestants. Another major study by Halbwachs is 'The Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land'. This was part of the essay 'The Social Framework of Memory' Pilgrims wanted to find, locate, and perceive by their senses, the whole iconography of their cathedrals. Towards the end of his life. Halbwachs became increasingly absorbed in social morphology and demography. Halbwachs last work on Memory appeared posthumously in 1950 and was translated as 'The Collective Memory' Halbwachs’s interest in memory is due to his teacher, the philosopher Henri Bergson. Halbwachs made the relationship between memory and society his central program. In his book 'The Social Framework of Memory,' he argued against considering memory as an exclusively individual faculty. According to him, to remember 'means to be tied to a collective framework of social reference points that allow memories to be co-ordinated in time and space'. Halbwachs believed that memories are acquired through society, they are recalled, recognised, and located socially. Memory also orders the experience and ensures collectivities. Collective memories are not pure recollections but reconstructions. To remember one needs others, to remember is to understand a relation. The memorable events in the lives of groups to which the individual belongs to serve as a coherent system of reference points for recall. 

 Émile Durkheim - Life and Times 

Émile Durkheim was a famous French philosopher and Sociologist. He is known as the father of the French School of Sociology. He is known for his method of combining sociological theories and empirical research. He is the one who studied the concept of collective memory. The term is found in the book 'The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. In the book, Durkheim provided the foundation for connecting Sociology and Memory. Durkheim was interested in the social power of commemorative rites. The common emotions are evoked like this helped to reconstitute the social body. The sociology of memory traces its origin to Emile Durkheim and his student Maurice Halbwachs. The interest of the former is in the commemoration and the latter is fascinated about how the past is reconstituted in the present. Both these concepts are the main research areas in Memory Studies.

Photography and Memory - Series 1

 

Photography and Memory -  Part 1

A camera is a memory catcher. It is a technology-enabled device that is a powerful tool to capture the fleeting moments of life and preserve them forever. Visual media culture is solely based on this device. This photo was captured during a train journey between Chiang Mai and Bangkok during our short but memorable CELTA trip to Thailand. We were travelling in the night express train to Bangkok to board our return flight to India. This photograph can be considered a meta photograph. A photograph of a camera captured using another camera .i.e. a mobile camera.

Photography and Memory - Part 2 

These bags keep travelling between the two shores of the Arabian sea. This digital mnemonic representation embodies the essential experience of 'the temporary people ' (the novel by Deepak Unnikrishnan) of the Middle East. This picture can be captured in most of the houses in the state of Kerala also. The bags are kept ready for a well planned and prepared journey. This photo is a visual representation of migration and the expatriate experience of more than 50 years. The people who carry their bags are known as 'guest workers' or even 'invisible people'. This migration is not a forced one. The unpreparedness of the Rohingya Muslims, the Syrian refugees, and the population affected by the Partition of 1947 is not visible here. Dreams fuel this migration, and there is also a little bit of greed involved. The Wishlist includes: building their own homes, getting the sisters married, buying land and other properties. While travelling from the Middle East to Kerala, these bags contain 'Persian' or 'Gulf' items. They include Arabian dates, Arabian perfumes (Part of Lady Macbeth's night monologue), foreign chocolates, almonds and pistachios. Based on a shopping list forwarded months ago, the items are purchased. The list contains the shopping demands of grandparents as well as grandchildren. The number of items on the shopping list has reduced now; since most products are available in India. There is still a demand for the products like Olive Oil and international beauty products. Kozhikodan Halwa, chips and pickles find a place in these bags when they return to the Gulf. There are also the adventurous expatriates who carry a whole jackfruit, or even gallons of coconut oil and even boxes of mangoes. These bags sometimes are seized for their infamous contents. The airport authorities and the immigration officials are a bit wary about this baggage. The public memory of the state of Kerala is replete with images of seized and contraband goods. 

 

Photography and Memory 3 

According to BBC News, the son of Muammar Gaddafi, Saadi Gaddafi, was released today (5-9-21) from prison. I remember watching the cavalcade of Gaddafi while working in Libya in the year 2006. Libya then was a peaceful country under the rule of Big Brother. Libyans had food in their stomach, electricity and water in their homes. Gaddafi constructed the Great Man-Made River (GMMR), a network of pipes that supplied fresh water to all the major towns in Libya. Gaddafi himself described the GMMR as the 'Eighth Wonder of the World' We made an extraordinary trip to see the Great Sahara desert. The photo is one of the digital memories of the trip. We camped in the town of Ghadames, an entry point to the Sahara desert. It was a border town in Libya from where we could see the lights in neighbouring Algeria. Ghadames was known as the " Pearl of the Desert" We had found the town to be deserted and lonely. We travelled for 462 Kms from Tripoli in our friend's BMW car to reach this town. We clicked this picture before we entered the town. The town wore a deserted look at night with the desert wind that sounded like some animal howling. The Old Port of the town of Ghadames has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. Islamic epic drama film — "The Message" used the town as a location. The city had connections with the Berber tribe of ‘ Tidamensi’ . Tidamensi was the original name of the town. The Romans changed the name to Cydamus and later on it became Ghadames. The town was one of the oldest pre-Saran settlements.

Series 1 - Food and Memory

 

This blog is more like a photo essay. It examines the topic of food and memory through the images presented in the poster. This is also an exploration into the areas of Food Studies and Memory Studies. The food items in the poster represent the embodiment of culture and identity. Most of the images are from my personal Instagram account which was taken while working abroad. The images have strong ethnographic moorings and they are all cultural constructs. This is the morning cup of tea, I used to drink every day at 7:30 am in my workplace in Shinas, Oman. This is green tea mixed with mint leaves. This is a typical morning drink in the Middle East. The culture would have spread from Morocco which is famous for its Maghrebi mint tea which is served in silver goblets or glass goblets. The Maghreb means the setting of the sun and the evening Islamic prayer is known as Maghrebi. The tea contains spearmint and sugar. This piece of cake is known as the Tiramisu. An Italian dessert. The word tiramisu means ' cheer me up ' or ' pull me up '. It contains two layers — one layer of sponge cake soaked in coffee and a layer of mascarpone cream. There is a dedicated website for promoting ‘the culture of tiramisu’. www.accademiadeltiramisu.com.

The origins of Tiramisu can be traced to the border in Friuli Venezia Giulia, a mountainous region that borders Austria and Slovenia. They discovered a handwritten recipe for Tiramisu from 1959. The craving for South Indian food was satisfied by swallowing these capsules. They are the mini version of the breakfast delicacy known as idli. This food is part of the cultural identity of every South Indian. These steamed rice cakes dipped in chutney is the embodiment of South India.

Music and Memory - Series 1

Part 1 - Boney M and Memories 

Whenever my dad used to get angry, me and my brother used to sing the first few lines of the song 'Daddy Cool' by Boney M. This band is entangled with my childhood memories just like the Swedish band Abba. Recently the song Rasputin by this band got revived in the collective memory of Kerala because of two medicos from Thrissur Medical College who danced to the tunes of the song. The dancers were targeted by some right-wing groups because they belonged to two different faiths. I feel that there is an amount of resistance in the songs of Boney M. Most of their songs are political. Songs like Belfast, El Lute, No Woman No Cry, Ma Baker and even Rasputin are replete with words of protests and revolution. Wikipedia tells us that Boney M. was a Euro-Caribbean vocal group created by German record producer Frank Farian, who served as the group's primary songwriter. 

Part 2 - Memory and Music 

When we examine memory and music multiple areas need to be discussed. One is Cognitive Science, which studied how the human brain consumes music and stores it in the brain. The way music is remembered or recollected based on external stimuli comes under the ambit of cognitive science. The second area of connection is culture and anthropology. The third area is how technology enables the production and creation of musical archives. Michael Pickering and Emily Keightley from Loughborough University, UK points out the fact that ‘phonographic remembrance has received little research attention. They have pointed out the lack of research activities in both photography and phonographs even though both can be considered ‘more than facilitators of memory’. At the cognitive level, music connects with emotions and enhances the mood of the listener which may also lead to an embodied experience like a dance. Anthropologists will treat music as a marker of identity (a recent example is the Enjoy Enjami song) Music recording will cover areas like genres of music, performances and the acts of recording a musical piece. The video posted above was shot in Rajasthan during our ten-day Rajasthan trip in 2016. We found this local artist at the historic location known as Jaswant Thada in Jodhpur. The building is a cenotaph made by Maharaja Sardar Singh of Jodhpur in 1899 in memory of his father Jaswant Singh II. Jaswant Thada serves as the cremation ground for the Rajput family of Marwar. The tunes played by the local artist adds to the ambience of the cenotaph and gives the visitors an experience of some authentic Rajasthani music. 

The three areas where music and memory interacts can be applied to this musical act. 

1. The phenomenological experience of listening to the music of Rajasthan have stayed with us forever. These folk musicians were omnipresent in almost all the castles, Havelis and forts that we have visited in Rajasthan. Our experience of sightseeing was enhanced by these desert tunes. After all these years the external stimuli of Rajasthani music acts as a trigger to remember and recollect our journey.
2. The cultural ethos of a state is reflected in the dress worn by these local artists. With their bright turbans and traditional dress, they represent the anthropological element in the act of remembrance and recollection. 
3. The live performance was captured using an iPhone and it was posted on my Instagram account on July 27th 2016. Technology enables the process of creating archives. This is another research area that will be part of the wide area of digital memory. 

Part 3 - ABBA and Memories 

Since it is difficult to discuss all my favourite artists and tracks in one go, I will start with the group ABBA and then move on to the next artist. I dedicate this blog to my dad, who even today listen to songs and has more than five different devices to play music. My fascination with ABBA started when I was young. My Dad had this HMV LP player and a decent collection of LPs. Most of the LPs were English albums and, we had more than one LP of ABBA. If I remember correctly, we had 4 or 5 LPs with some heavenly songs. Later in life when I started earning a livelihood by teaching English, I used to tell the ‘eager and not so eager faces’ in front of me that Abba is an inspiration to everyone who wants to learn English. The group’s name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names. The artists in ABBA were born in Sweden but, they learned English and started dominating the European charts in the 1980s. Some of the songs that are etched in my memory are — (to name a few) Money Money, Waterloo, Fernando, When I Kissed the Teacher, Dancing Queen, Tiger, Move On, and Knowing Me, Knowing You. I am so happy that I am writing this short note on ABBA as the first group as part of my investigation into Memory and Music. The studies in music and memory are almost like the studies in Photography and Memory. Both photography and phonographs are ‘mnemonic devices or resources. The main aim of the research is to investigate the question - How does music facilitate the acts of recall and recollection? Music is considered a means to ‘regain the past’ or ‘relating the past to the present.

Material Memory - Series 1

Part 1 - Refrigerator Magnets and Memory 

Refrigerator magnets are popular souvenir and collectable objects. They carry the memories of the places that people have visited. There are also other memorabilia which people collect like T-shirts, mini-Taj Mahal etc. Travellers often take these material objects and proudly display them on their refrigerators. It is like a taking piece of the land that they have visited. The New Indian Express published an article recently about an artist who has started turning memories into clay art. Based in Thiruvanthapuram, Rithu Kurup began this project during the lockdown days to keep herself engaged. What she does is creating miniature versions of memory as a fridge magnet or tabletop decor. 

Part 2 - Material Memory Museum

Museum of Material Memory is a digital repository of the material culture of the Indian sub-continent. The project aims to trace family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectables and objects of antiquity. The project aims to unfold generational narratives about objects. The project was co-founded in 2017 by Aanchal Malhotra and Navdha Malhotra. The former is an artist and oral historian who works with memory and material culture. Her book 'Remnants of a Separation - History of the Partition through Material Memory [ 2017) is a wonderful collection of interviews and oral testimonies based on the Partition of 1947.  Access more details about the project — http://www.museumofmaterialmemory.com/

Part 3 - Gandhiji's Pen, Chekutty Doll 

While working in the Kingdom of Bahrain, we used to make regular trips to Virgin Mega Store inside the City Center Mall. One day we were eye-shopping, we came across this pen, It was a pen with Gandhiji's figurine attached to it. There was a sense of wonderment to see an object which carried the heaviness of the Indian cultural memory. There was an instant connection with our land and home. We also realised how universal is Gandhi and his life. While working abroad ( Libya, Oman and Bahrain) the locals identify the Indianess in us by talking about Big B, SRK and Gandhiji. In 2016, while travelling through all the major cities of Rajasthan ( from Jaipur to Bikaner) we came across this puppet/doll in a roadside Dhaba. It was left dangling from a nail on a window frame. The doll had a worn outlook and it was gathering dust. Puppetry is a major art form in Rajasthan. The traditional marionettes of Rajasthan are known as Kathputli. Stories from mythology and legends are told through puppets in Rajasthan. The other states of India where puppetry is famous are Orissa, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. These dolls are also part of the collective memory of these states transmitting the rich tradition of oral history and folklore. 

Chekutty Doll is part of the public memory of Kerala. An article appeared in The NewsMinute news portal which was written by Korah Abraham. The details posted here are from this article which is titled ‘ Chekutty Dolls: How Kerala got its new symbol of hope - A project by social entrepreneurs Lakshmi Menon and Gopinath Parayil. Chekutty is a doll up-cycled from the Chendamagalam handloom sarees that were destroyed during the Kerala floods. Chekutty is a handmade doll and it has become a symbol of hope to almost 600 weavers. It is also known as the Chendamagalam Kutty. If you visit the website - www. chekutty.in, you can read the following lines. ‘Chekutty has scars, Chekutty has stains; but Chekutty represents each of us who survived the floods’ Apart from supporting a weaving community financially, the Chekutty project is a significant area in the public memory of Kerala during the 2018 Kerala floods. One of the rare cases where Memory Studies talks about hope and resilience instead of trauma and silence. 

Part 4 - 'Remnants of Separation' by Aanchal Malhotra 

 Preface to the Paperback Edition 

The preface is written by the author Aanchal Malhotra, and it discusses the following ideas, How was the research for the book done? The reasons behind writing this book. The journey or the revisitation to get the signature of the interviewees. The research is centred around the objects or things that people carried across the border. The author interviewed men and women who were directly or indirectly affected by the Partition of the Indian subcontinent. The technical and historical name for the line that separated India and Pakistan is known as the Radcliffe Line. Aanchal Malhotra was very persistent in her research, and it involved years of study. She continues with her research into the 'unknown' and 'unspeakable' zones of 'migratory memory' and its consequences. One object that Aanchal mentions in the book is a sword from Rawalpindi, which was carried to Mirpur. 

Another object or thing is a Karachi Club membership card that was issued before the Partition. Aanchal believes that there is 'a need to talk about what happened. Even though we have a massive volume of information available on Partition, there is still 'much we do not know'. The stories that are part of the book are all 'stories of courage'. Most of the men and women spent years in silence, unable to relive the trauma of the Partition. The third generation has inherited the fragmented stories and memories of the event. Aanchal quotes the author Raghu Karnad who said that people die two times. The first is at the end of their lives, and the second is when people who remember them are all gone. This work has helped to immortalise the memories of the people who got 'scattered like leaves due to partition.' Schindler's List ends with the survivors and the actors who portrayed them visiting Schindler's grave and placing stones on it, which is a traditional Jewish sign of respecting the dead. Aanchal Malhotra, after the release of the book, visited all the men and women whom she interviewed, asking them to sign on the page where their story appears in the book. This is a fitting tribute to the 'Partitioned generation' and their memories. 

Archives and the Great Divide - Review of the Foreword 

Prof. Rudrangshu Mukherjee writes the Foreword for Aanchal Malhotra's The Remnants of Partition. He talks about the creation of an archive that is based on memory, stories, the violence of lost friends and relatives. It is an archive that is about lives lived and lost. All these together becomes the stuff of 'remembrance of things past'. 'Separation' and 'Uprooting' seems to be the two words that figure in the discussion on Partition. There are two types of archival documents. The first one is the well-known and the well-mined one and mainly include the official written documents prepared for the Partition. The second type of archive is based on the narrative to understand how the Partition and Independence happened together. These archival documents do not touch the lives of millions of women and men directly involved in the Great Divide—the stories from a population that moved. Memories, possessions also moved along with this movement of the people. Many of the displaced people were unable or unwilling to speak. According to Prof.Rudrangshu, even silence can be the material for history. The objects that were brought from the 'other side, too, were silent. Some of the pertinent questions asked in this book are; What objects do people take when they leave? How do they differentiate between what is valuable and what is essential? Most of the time, people carried memories 'too heavy to be borne.' Aanchal Malhotra's book is about loss, about memories, but also hope. 

Part 5 - Kindi – An emblem of Material Memory 

Material Memory Kindi is used to keep water at the entrance of the house, so that visitors can wash their feet with this water, and also to wash hands after meals. It is normally kept outside the home and it is used for ablutions before entering a home. It is also given to new brides at the time of their marriage as a gift. It is known as a unique artefact from Kerala. This is almost the North Indian equivalent of a 'lota' which is used in Bengal, Pakistan for cleansing purposes and religious ablutions. These days 'kindi' is used as a showpiece and is exported to the US and European countries as a symbol of nostalgia. The diasporic communities use it as a mnemonic reminder of their 'real or original homes'. It is also part of the nostalgia and the trip down memory lane. Today, it has become a collector's item. Kindi also has become a derogatory word especially after it was represented in the movie Manichitrathazhu. The movie is regarded as a milestone in Malayalam cinema which led to many remakes in more than 5 languages in India. The movie, however, gave 'kindi' a bad reputation. This note is inspired by the research in memory studies done by Aanchal Malhotra which is published in her book Remnants of Separation' The book traces the histories of the 'objects' (household items) carried across the border during the Partition of 1947. The objects are regarded as physical evidence into the inner recess of one of the darkest times in human history. According to Aanchal Malhotra, 'the material memory remains an incredibly important way of understanding personal and collective histories'

Glossary of Terms related to Memory Studies - Part 1

Post-Memory 

Marianne Hirsch coined the term post-memory. The term first appears in the essay 'Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning and Post Memory. Holocaust photographs carried by the survivors to America are the reference point. Marianne Hirsch quotes from Susan Sontag's book 'On Photography' and Roland Barthes book 'Camera Lucida' She proposes the term post-memory as a reflection on memory. Post memory can be (like memory) 'constructed', 'mediated' by 'narration' and 'imagination'. Marianne Hirsch says that photography is the medium connecting memory and post-memory. Post memory is about second-generation memory, particularly in the context of the Holocaust. It refers to the memory transmitted by forbearers to their descendants as narratives or images. It is all about the 'indirect remembrance of the past. 

References: 

 Hirsch, Marianne. “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory.” Discourse, vol. 15, no. 2, 1992, pp. 3–29. 

 In: [Comparing Grief in French, British and Canadian Great War Fiction (1977-2014)](https://brill.com/view/title/36499)

 Author: [Piotr Sadkowski](https://brill.com/search?f_0=author&q_0=Piotr+Sadkowski)

What is counter-memory? 

It is a practice of memory formation that is both social and political. It is the one that runs counter to the official histories of governments, mainstream mass media and 'the society of the spectacle' (a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism, deals with issues like class alienation, cultural homogenisation and mass media. Guy Debord wrote a book with this title - The Society of Spectacle ) The term counter-memory is seen in association with the work of Michel Foucault. According to Foucault counter-memory is the process of remembering in a socio-political context. Counter-Memory is a form of praxis. It is a form of resistance against the official discourses of historical continuity of the so-called regimes of truth. It is exercised by those who are marginalised by power. Foucault's definition is closely related to counter-culture. Counter-memory represents a reversed perspective - a bottom-up. It serves as an act of democratisation and pluralisation and remembering. It is a political act and aims at influencing the existing power relations.

Literature and Memory - Series 1 - Examining David Diop's 'At Night All Blood is Black' - 12 Part series

Introduction

These blogs are based on my reading and understanding of David Diop's novel 'At Night All Blood is Black'. The book won the Man International Booker Prize in the year 2021. 

PART 1 - Man International Booker Prize 

Celebrating the author and the translator Man International Booker Prize complements the Man Booker Prize. The prize was awarded every two years. Since 2016, the award has been given annually. The prize money is 50,000 GBP. Earlier it was given in recognition of a writer's body of work rather than one title. Sine 2016, it is awarded to a single book translated to English. The prize money is shared between the author and the translator. Now the award is renamed the International Booker Prize. I was fortunate to meet and listen to the words of Jokha Alharthi, the Omani writer who won the award in 2019. I was attending an International Conference at PSMO college in Malappuram district in Kerala. Mrs Jokha Alharthi was the Keynote Speaker. The book which won her the award was Celestial Bodies. The translation of the book is available in Malayalam, and the translation done by my good friend and well-wisher Ibrahim Badusha Wafi.Ruskin Press plays a pivotal role in publishing the translated works from different languages. David Diop's book 'At Night All Blood is Black' is translated by Anna Moschovakis. She is a poet, author and translator. This post introduces three translated books published by Pushkin Press. 1. No Place to Lay One's Hand by Françoise Frenkel - The preface to the book is written by Patrick Modiano. The story of Françoise Frenkel - a Polish Jew who opens her bookshop in Berlin, which was a dream project for her. The dream lasted only for two decades. Françoise flees to France due to Aryanization. When the war starts, she moves to Nice and is horrified by what she sees around her. The book is translated by Stephanie Smee. 2. On Love and Tyranny - The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt by Ann Heberlein How the ground-breaking work of Hannah Arendt was shaped by both her personal and outside world. The biography traces the journey of Hannah Arendt from Germany and then to Occupied France. The book is translated by Alice Menzies. 3. The Limits of My Language - Meditation on Depression by Eva Meijer. The book deals with the treatment of depression and how it can influence our bodies. The book also tells us 'how to move on from our darkest thoughts. The translator is Antoinette Fawcett. 

Part 2 - Pushkin, Perumal Murugan and Translation 

The connecting link between yesterday's post and this post is Jo Walker. She is a person who believes that she can do only one thing in her life, i.e. design book covers. She feels she was 'born to design book jackets and can't imagine doing anything else' These words are from the publishing house's website where she is currently employed as an Art Director. She is with Pushkin Press is a British publishing house founded in 1997. Pushkin Press published the book by David Diop - At Night All Blood is Black. They are doing a great job in translating works from different corners of the world. Translation can be regarded as an art but not a perfect one. In one of the Clubhouses discussions I listened to last night, the noted critic and reader, N.E Sudheer, said it is 'difficult to translate some works'. Vaikom Mohammed Basheer is one writer who cannot be translated. Pushkin Press has got more than a hundred books that are translated. They are committed to publishing 'high-quality writing from around the world'. Towards the end of 'At Night All Blood is Black', few pages give information about the translated works. It was a surprise and a matter of pride to find the name of Perumal Murugan on the list. Pushkin Press has published two of his novels - 'The Story of A Goat' and 'One Part Woman. Perumal Murugan is described as a compelling and award-winning contemporary writer'. Pushkin Press also has a lovely collection of biographies and memoirs. I will be writing about some of the selected titles from Pushkin Press tomorrow.

PART 3 -  Senegalese tirailleur

A tirailleur is a type of light infantry trained to skirmish ahead of the main army columns. The noun tirailleur has many meanings. It can be a skirmisher or a rifleman, or a sharpshooter. African troops were used as ‘cannon fodders’ to spare French lives. The French recruited 140,000 West Africans as tirailleurs. They served as combatants in Europe between 1914 and 1918. This cross-cultural encounter is a significant episode that happened between Africans and Europeans. The French colonial masters were able to inject propaganda into the minds of the Africans. The words used were ‘The Victory in the War will Save our Race and Save yours’. These soldiers’ personal experiences remained obscure. No war memorials were erected the Africans fought along with the French. The influence of Oral history is finally revealing after nearly 75 years of silence. The French recruited more than 29,000 tirailleurs from Senegal. They are the Senegalese Tirailleurs. The French deployed the Senegalese forces in the trenches. Senegalese combat losses were almost three times greater than those of French soldiers. The oral memories helped to gauge the significance of the wars on Senegalese. Most of the Senegalese feels that over a million fathers, mothers, wives and sweethearts made ‘a useless sacrifice’ in the past. Life histories that encompass the entire span of one’s existence is an excellent way to map the past. This is the background against which David Diop’s - At Night All Blood is Black will be read and discussed in the next ten days.  Inputs from ‘Memoirs of the Maelstrom -  A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War by Joe Lunn’

Part 4 - Exploring the book - 'At Night All Blood is Black'

After a detailed discussion of the book cover, information about the author and the translator, and the historical background, today, we embark on a journey to examine the book per se. Today we are discussing the events in the first ten pages of the book. The first ten pages cover the first two chapters. I have selected a passage from Page # 10 of the book. This is the section in the novel where Alfa Ndiaye is back in the trenches after carrying the dead body of his friend ( brother) Mademba Diop. ( note the similarity of the surnames of the author and this character) Alfa had to walk a long distance with the mortal remains of his friend. The moon was shining brightly at that time. Alfa's friends praised him for his courage, and they predicted that he would be awarded Croix de Guerre ( a military decoration of France), that his family will be proud of him, and even Mademba will be proud of him. The thoughts in Alfa's mind are different "I didn't care about the medal," Excerpt From David Diop. "At Night All Blood Is Black" Heavily burdened with guilt, he was thinking how he couldn't fulfil the wish of his friend who wanted to be killed to escape the scavenger birds of the battlefields. The words of Mademba echoed in his mind "slit my throat like a sacrificial sheep, don't let the scavengers of death devour my body! Don't abandon me to all the filth. Alfa Ndiaye… Alfa... I'm begging you…slit my throat!" ( At Night All Blood is Black Page # 5) From this short note, we can see that the tale weaved by Diop is not an easy read. Some of the descriptions in the novel are pretty intense. Diop describes the war-torn land in an in-depth manner. Diop is also a master when it comes to endearing illustrations. Let's examine this line from page 4 - "While the others hid in the gaping wounds in the earth we called as trenches". The description of the body destroyed by mortar shells is frightening and shocking. "his insides outside, like a sheep that has been dismembered after the sacrifice" (At Night All Blood is Black Page # 4). The character of Alfa is portrayed as one who has got a mind of his own. He is not gullible and following the mob frenzy of other indoctrinated soldiers. His case is a strange mixture of the personal memory ( his deep-rooted friendship with Mademba) and the collective memory of the times (the French Colonial era and the Senegalese Tirailleurs.

Part 5 - The Title of the Novel and the First Line of the Novel

David Diop's 'At Night All Blood is Black' The title of the novel appears on page 21. It is the line with which the author ends Chapter III. There is always a fascination to study the first lines of famous works in literature. Ursula Guin, in her essay 'The Fisherwoman's daughter describes the first lines as "First sentences are doors to worlds". Some of the famous first lines are "Call Me Ishmael' ( Moby Dick by Herman Melville), 'I am an invisible Man' ( Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison) 'Mother died today, or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure' ( The Outsider by Albert Camus) The opening lines of Diop's novel is '… I know, I understand'. This the personal philosophy of Alfa Ndiaye. He was not like others in the trench. He found others to be 'foolish' and 'idiotic'. According to Alfa, they always said 'yes'. They are always ready to follow the orders of the French Captain. They believed the Captain when he said that they are all 'great warriors' "You, the Chocolate of black Africa, are naturally the bravest of the brave". France admires you and is grateful' Alfa understand the hollowness of these words, and they don't influence him. He says, 'I understand the true meaning of the Captain's words'. Alfa asserts himself when he says, "I am free to think whatever I want'. He never returned to the trenches when 'a retreat was called'. He would be the last one to come back to the trench. Since Alfa always came back with a trophy or the spoils of the war, nobody questioned him. Alfa earned his freedom and independence. Others respected him, and they sometimes regarded him as a 'totem' and 'a force of nature. Diop is quite graphic when describing the horrid details of the war. Reader discretion is advised when reading the parts where Alfa becomes a savage and is on the hunt for the 'blue-eyed German' who killed Mademba. The novel illustrates how the French ( like any other colonial power) pitted the Senegalese tirailleurs against each other based on their tribal lineage. 'A Diop would not want it said of him that he is less courageous than a Ndiaye' (p14)

Part 6 - Conciliation, Remembering and Filling the Void 

David Diop’s 'At Night All Blood is Black’ plays a more significant role of being a work that helps France to face its colonial past in Africa. The book has sold more than 1,70,000 copies in France. When Diop attends book publicity events, people bring him ‘letters and photos of their grandfather or great grandfather with African infantrymen. Today, the book is discussed widely in the global academic circles ( like the Bangladesh War of 1971). Diop spent his childhood in Africa, and he was used to seeing soldiers being paraded in the streets during the National Day celebrations. These soldiers had fought for France in the two World Wars. Back in France, when he started reading letters by French soldiers, he didn’t find any reference to the infantrymen from colonised African countries. In Senegal, they remembered what they did for France. Out of exasperation, he wrote a fictional letter from a Senegalese soldier addressed to the French government. We may regard this as the starting point for ‘At Night All Blood is Black’. The work has led to a reckoning with the colonial history in French fiction’. Diop believes that ‘remembrance is necessary to achieve a sense of balance’. Diop was born to a family with two cultures ( also languages - French and Wolof). His mother was French, and his father was Senegalese. It was his mother who encouraged him to read French and African authors. Diop was heavily influenced by the universalist values of France, especially the Enlightenment movement led by the likes of Voltaire and Denis Diderot ( French Philosopher and Father of the Encyclopedia). Diop also researched the works of historians to fill the void in the narrative. He has also credited the 20th-century Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma to bring African flour to French literature. Diop terms it as a form of ‘reappropriation’ For Diop, writing is a way to ‘conciliate’ He believes that there is nothing to ‘reconcilliate.’ (With inputs from the article which appeared in the New York Times on May 31, 2021)

Part 7 - David Diop’s At Night All Blood is Black - Totem to Taboo 

From chapter four of the book, we witness a change in how the ‘others’ regard Alfa. They included both white soldiers (French) and Chocolate Soldiers from West Africa’ Alfa was celebrated as a war hero whenever he returned to the trenches. He was worshipped as a ‘totem’ or as a force of nature. When he returned, he always carried with him the ‘stench of death. Diop makes it a point to convey to the reader the ferociousness and the callousness of the war. Alfa says, My stench is the stench of death. When Alfa returned, his ‘war brothers’ fed him with delicacies, he was offered tobacco and helped clean his uniform. From this state of celebration, they became afraid of him. He was regarded as an untouchable. They were afraid of his frenzied way of killing and collecting the hands of the enemy soldiers as war trophies. He was always kept at a distance, and they started regarding him as a ‘soldier sorcerer’. Rumours started spreading about him and he was blamed for the death of Mademba. They believed that Alfa is a ‘devourer of people’s inside, a dëmm. Chapter eight is all about the bonding between Alfa and Mademba. Diop’s description of this bonding is note-worthy ‘we were like twin brothers who came out of the same day or the same night from their mother’s womb’ The day Mademba die, there was a quarrel between them about their tribal totems. Provoked by what Alfa said, Mademba Diop left the trenched ‘screaming louder than anyone else’ That is the day Mademba Diop died killed by the blue-eyed German.

Part 8 -  Beyond Post-colonial Narratives 

Chapter Nine begins with the words - ‘they’d had enough’ which refers to how Alfa’s countrymen and French soldiers are afraid of his antics in the frontline. The fear that they have in their mind reaches its zenith in this chapter. We are also introduced to the elderly figure of Ibrahima Seck, who is a winner of the Croix de Guerre military honour. He serves as the translator from French to Wolof. He always began his sentences with the exact words ‘The Captain says…” What the Captain told Alfa was to take rest for one month. The Captain also wanted to know where Alfa has hidden the ‘seven severed hands’. Chapter Ten is all about the tale of the severed hands. The chapter is not for the faint-hearted. There are descriptions of how Alfa used the techniques used at his home to dry those hands. “ I dried the hands of the blue-eyed one the way ay home we dry fish we want to preserve’. He is also talking about his friend Jean-Baptiste who the first enemy hand. He didn’t mind Jean Baptiste doing so. Alfa describes him as ‘the only real white friend in the trench’. When Alfa returned with the body of Mademba Diop, Jean-Baptiste was the only one who took care of him in the proper way. He even shared bread with Alfa and made him laugh. Chapter Eleven is about the ‘ugly death’ of Jean Baptiste’ He died because he provoked the blue-eyed Germans with the hand stolen from Alfa. The severed hand was fixed on his helmet. The reader is given a subtle hint that Jean-Baptiste deliberately did the act of provocation. Few days before the Germans killed him, he had received ‘a perfumed letter from home’. Alfa describes the event in these words ‘When he finished reading the letter, Jean Baptiste face has become great’. The chapters which we analysed today are significant because it introduces some new characters. It also brings in the short-lived but meaningful companionship between a Senegalese soldier and a French soldier. This is the grey area in Post-colonial studies. These bondings destroy the very idea of a coloniser and a colonised. One immediate example which comes to my mind is from the movie Lagaan where the white lady helps the villages to learn Cricket. There is always a level of truth beyond the political fiasco, like the story of Toba Tek Singh by Saadat Hasan Manto.

Part 9 - African Cultural Collective Memory in David Diop’s Work

David Diop’s novel is heavily interspersed with references to the African culture and tradition. In a way, through these references, the Senegalese origins of the author is celebrated. Alfa’s attacks on the German front in search of the ‘blue-eyed one’ is compared to the African mamba snake. “I slid like a snake along the side of the trench. I was invisible, and I slid, slid, slid as fast as I could to get myself right next to the enemy soldier” The Captain and the old Chocolat Croix de Guerre infantryman Ibrahima Seck wanted to know about the war trophies which Alfa has collected ( The seven severed hands) He never told them where he had hidden those trophies. Captain Armand ordered the soldiers to launch a search for finding these seven severed hands, and they were ready to inspect the things of Alfa. But he cleverly attached a talisman to the trunk’s handle where he had kept his war trophies. The amulet was given to him by his father before Alfa left for the war. So when the elder Ibrahima Seck came to inspect Alfa’s trunk, he backed away, seeing the talisman which had the drawing of a human hand that resembled the skin of the lizard Ounk. Chapter fourteen ends with the fling Alfa had with Fary Thiam, a girl in Alfa’s village. They met on the shores of the river in their village of Gandiol. They could get some privacy because the villagers were afraid of the river goddess Mame Coumba Bang.

Part 10 -  Mother, Mademba and Fatherland 

The following few chapters in the book ‘At Night All Blood is Black’ does not contain the horrid details of the war zone. Due to the excessive energy shown by Alfa, the Captain has asked him to occupy the ‘Rear’ (another word for the rehabilitation centre). He is confined to a hospital bed under the supervision of Dr Francois and his daughter Mademoiselle Francois who was a nurse. Alfa could sense that Mademoiselle Francois had a particular way of looking at him. "She said to me with her matching blue eyes that she found me very handsome from top to bottom". Alfa feels that 'he is far away from the battle'. His mind wanders, and he starts reminiscing about his life in the village and how he and Mademba courted the girls, especially Fary Thiam. There were strict ancestral rules which guided the acts of courtship and marriage. There are two instances where Diop has shared two nuggets of wisdom in the form of the Fula proverbs. The Fula nomad's adage says, "At dawn, you can already know if the day will be good and bad." Another Fula proverb says, "Until a man is dead, he is not done being created." Alfa goes on a trip down memory lane lying in the hospital bed. Since he couldn't speak French, he used drawings for communicating with the doctor. He drew two pictures lying there. One sketch is of his mother Penndo, and the second one was of Mademba. His mother was his father's fourth wife, and she left him when he was nine years old. She belonged to the nomadic tribes, and she didn't like staying in one place for long. She searched for her father and brothers, and it is believed that she was captured by the Moorish horsemen and sold as a slave to a great sheikh. The second drawing was a portrait of Mademba. The drawing is ugly because he was ugly, but according to Alfa, ‘If Mademba wasn't as beautiful as I am on the outside, inside he was more so' It was because of Mademba that Alfa joined the war. Mademba was educated in French schools where he was taught to love the Fatherland - France. When Alfa's mother left him, it was Mademba who took care of him. Mademba wanted to become a French citizen. He wanted to start a business in Saint Louis and become rich.

Part 11 - Life in the Rehab

Alfa Ndiaye in the rehabilitation centre or the Rear is flooded with memories of his village and Fary Thiam. It dawned on him that Fary Thiam offered herself to him because she wanted him to be a man before he went to fight the war. Fary Thiam is pictured as a sensible woman because she understood very well that France and its army would take him from her. She knew that he would never return to Gandiol. She went against the ancestral law and her father Abdou Thiam, the village's Chief. Alfa's father never liked Abdou because, as the village chief, he urged everyone to cultivate only peanuts instead of cabbage, instead of watermelons, instead of tomatoes, instead of millets. Alfa's father opposed this proposition in the meeting. He said that he is ready to dedicate one field for peanuts, but he will not use all of his fields for peanuts. In a polite manner, Alfa's father told the village chief that he should 'concern himself with the people's interest' This is a message for all the leaders in the world, and that is the only way they can be great. The third drawing which Alfa made for the doctor was the seven hands. Few days after his stay in the 'Rear', he felt Dr Francois washing away 'the filth of war from inside' his head. He sketched to 'cleanse the insides of his head with big buckets of mystical water'. After seeing his sketch of the seven severed hands, Dr Francois stopped smiling at him.

Part 12 - The Bodily Scars and the Stories that they Tell

The last few pages of the novel talk about the physical might of Alfa. Alfa is well built compared to Mademba, who is more of an intellectual time which is good at studies. Alfa is a wrestler and knows how to use his agile body to win wrestling events. Alfa was easily selected by the army recruitment officers, whereas Mademba was turned down in the first attempt. Alfa believes in the power of his body “my arms are heavier than I expected; they are full of suppressed power that feels like it could explode at any moment”. The same bodily attributes are referred to when Alfa gets physical with Mademoiselle Francois. ‘Her female gaze is something which is repeatedly mentioned in the book. ‘Mademoiselle’s eyes were sweeping across the middle of my body. As the novel move towards its conclusion, the character of Alfa kind of disintegrates and merges with that of Mademba. The novel ends with the line ‘God’s truth, I swear to you that now, whenever I think of us he is me and I am him’. The novel is also a celebration of the act of doing rather than talking about doing. The contrast between Alfa and Mademba is an indicator of this. With his war scars, Alfa is full of stories to tell, whereas Mademba is an academician who can only talk and give lectures. Men without scars are described as ‘men without history’.

This is a 12 part series which examined the 2021 International Booker Prize winning novel by David Diop - At Night All Blood is Black. The novel is examined through the lens of memory studies and cultural studies. Please do leave your valuable comments and feedback at aftermemoryspace@gmail.com. Thank you. 

CITED # 2 - Celebrating the words of Milan Kundera

 

The Story of Book Covers

You can judge a book by its cover - this revised axiom is relevant when we discuss the topic of book covers. A Book cover captures the entire book with an image. A book cover designer should practice deep reading to understand the book's contents and design something based on that. The design on the book cover can be a metaphor for the whole book. Since I am interested in designing and playing with colours, book cover design is one area that has fascinated me. Some of my favourite book covers are - Manu S Pillai's The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin: Tales from Indian History, Poonachi by Perumal Murugan, The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, Silent Travels by Benyamin, Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Lolita by Nabokov, To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, and Malice by Keigo Higashino.  

Examining the book cover of 'At Night All Blood is Black' by David Diop, we are intrigued by the shadowy lean figure of a lone African soldier moving forward with a rifle in his hand.  A bayonet is fixed on the gun. He seems to be hunched forward because of the military rucksack on his back. The white circle in the centre represents the moon. The interplay of black and white reinforces the shadowy figure of the soldier. The bluish shades create a contrasting effect to delineate the human shape with the gun. 

 

Jo Walker designed the cover. When I visited the official website of this book designer, I realized that she is the one who had designed the book cover of The Vegetarian by Han Kang. Jo Walker is a professional book cover designer and has more than 20 years of experience designing book covers. She has worked with various publishing houses, including Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House, Granta and Harper Collins. Jo Walker has designed the covers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's four books, including Americanah and Purple Hibiscus. She has created the book covers of the Nobel laureate Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook) and the Letters to the Lady Upstairs by Marcel Proust. 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.wired.com/2014/09/makes-brilliant-book-cover-master-explains/

The Man International Booker Prize - Celebrating the Author and the Translator

Man International Booker Prize complements the Man Booker Prize. The prize was awarded every two years. Since 2016, the award has been given annually. The prize money is 50,000 GBP. Earlier it was given in recognition of a writer's body of work rather than one title. Sine 2016, it is awarded to a single book translated to English. The prize money is shared between the author and the translator. Now the award is renamed the International Booker Prize. I was fortunate to meet and listen to the words of Jokha Alharthi, the Omani writer who won the award in 2019. I was attending an International Conference at PSMO college in Malapuram district in Kerala. Mrs Jokha Alharthi was the Keynote Speaker. The book which won her the award was Celestial Bodies. The translation of the book is available in Malayalam, and the translation was done by my good friend and well-wisher Ibrahim Badusha Wafi. 

 

Ruskin Press plays a pivotal role in publishing the translated works from different languages. David Diop's book 'At Night All Blood is Black' is translated by Anna Moschovakis. She is a poet, author and translator. This post introduces three translated books published by Pushkin Press.

 

No Place to Lay One's Hand by Françoise Frenkel - The preface to the book is written by Patrick Modiano. The story of Françoise Frenkel - a Polish Jew who opens her bookshop in Berlin, which was a dream project for her. The dream lasted only for two decades. Françoise flees to France due to Aryanization. When the war starts, she moves to Nice and is horrified by what she sees around her. The book is translated by Stephanie Smee. 

 

On Love and Tyranny - The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt by Ann Heberlein How the ground-breaking work of Hannah Arendt was shaped by both her personal and outside world. The biography traces the journey of Hannah Arendt from Germany and then to Occupied France. The book is translated by Alice Menzies. 

 

The Limits of My Language - Meditation on Depression by Eva Meijer. The book deals with the treatment of depression and how it can influence our bodies. The book also tells us 'how to move on from our darkest thoughts. The translator is Antoinette Fawcett

What is after-the memory space?

After-the memory space is one man's dream to know more about memory studies, a field of study that has emerged in the recent past. The founder of after-the memory space is Premjith Mathew and he also serves as the chief investigator of the project. 

Memory Studies - A short note

 

Memory Studies - What it is or What it entails? It is a research field that explores both personal and collective memory. The possibility of an ‘entanglement’ of both these versions is bound to occur especially when we examine historical events like the Holocaust and the Partition of 1947. Memory studies is an interdisciplinary area of study. It borrows ideas and concepts from Sociology, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Psychology, Architecture, Cognitive Sciences, Archaeology, History, Literature, etc. Memory is not just about remembering, it also deals with forgetting or erasures. Sometimes forgetting is induced by external forces like the State or it can be internal with the individual deciding not to remember certain traumatic and uneasy ones. Memory studies always operate in three levels - Personal, Collective, and Official. All these three interact with each other. Today, Memory Studies also explores the way technology enables remembering and forgetting. This is done in the context of current trend of ‘excessively commemorating personal events’ in the form of photographs (selfies), vlogs via social media platforms. The key areas in technology-driven memory studies are Digital Memory and Prosthetic memory.