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The rise of the 'liminal Briton' : literary and artistic productions of black and Asian women in the Midlands
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Ray, Sumana (2011) The rise of the 'liminal Briton' : literary and artistic productions of black and Asian women in the Midlands. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk:80/record=b2580750~S1
Abstract
Black and Asians occupy an increasingly prominent position within British
society today and London is considered central to the multicultural
imagination of Britain. This thesis leans away from the established Londoncentric
discourses and shifts spotlight specifically to the Midlands, which
occupies an equivalent, if differently significant status, in terms of its
multicultural status. Hegemonic notions of the dominant status of London
are thus contested through the peripheral focus.
The project analyses some of the regional expressions of ‘Britishness’
by women in this region as articulated in literature, film and performing arts.
Interdisciplinarity is at the core of this project as it not only engages in a
fusion of various disciplines within the Arts, but also invokes disciplinary
boundary crossing by forging links with the Social Sciences, Anthropology in
particular. In the thesis, I have introduced the concept of the ‘Liminal Briton’,
using the anthropological concept of ‘liminality’ to characterise the positioning
of new generation multi-ethnic Britons in contemporary British society. I
argue that the postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha’s much celebrated notion of
‘hybridity’ is not adequate in capturing the heterogeneity of new generation
multi-ethnic Britons. I therefore propose a perspectival shift to ‘liminality’ as a
more encompassing term to define the condition of these new generation
black and Asian individuals, specifically women writers and artists in the
Midlands.
Informed by a discussion of migration into the Midlands and analysis
of some of the dominant critical discourses in post 1980s Britain in the
Introduction, each of the three main chapters focus on a specific genre.
Chapter 1 explores how Asian women’s agency has been represented in
literature and construction of the British Asian subject is manifested in the
novels of Ravinder Randhawa and Meera Syal. The ‘liminal’ spectrum has
been used to identify the multiple positioning of the women protagonists in
the chosen novels. The focus of Chapter 2 is the genre of short stories where
a selection of short stories are analysed from the anthologies Whispers in the
Walls and Her Majesty. All of these stories are literary expressions of new
generation black and Asian women in the Midlands and the landscape of the
region features strongly in the stories. The chapter also involves a discussion
of the crucial role played by regional presses with particular emphasis on
Tindal Street Press, an independent regional publisher based in the
Midlands. Chapter 3 entails an exploration of artistic expressions of women,
focusing on film and performing arts. In this chapter I trace the development
of black British film-making in the post 1980s before moving on to a discussion of Gurinder Chadha’s film Bhaji on the Beach where ‘liminal’
Britons recognize their ‘liminality’. The ‘liminal’ space of the theatre is also
examined in this chapter along with the development black and Asian
women’s theatre movements in Britain. The politics of regional artistic
productions is investigated through the role of regional playhouses along with
the debate on the furore surrounding the staging of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s
play Behzti. The important and enduring outcome of this regional production
is highlighted in this section. The final section of this thesis is the Conclusion
which draws together and reinforces the key arguments.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Multiculturalism -- England -- Midlands, Women, Black -- England -- Midlands, Liminality, Women authors, Women artists -- England -- Midlands, Minority women in motion pictures | ||||
Official Date: | April 2011 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Varma, Rashmi | ||||
Extent: | 362 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
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