Politics of canonisation: who is marginalised and why? Vimala Devi: a case study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/va.v0i36.159656Keywords:
Goan literature, canon, postcolonial criticism, exile, nostalgia, diaspora literatureAbstract
This article discusses practices of canon formation in relation to writers de-territorialised from their mother culture, due to emigration or exile. The aim of this discussion is to expose the limits of the “national literatures” for the reception of new literary works. Secondly, I question the importance awarded to political criteria in what concerns the reception of writers who were active during the period of decolonization, submitting aesthetic and scholarly criteria to certain ideological beliefs. As a case study, this article addresses the works of Vimala Devi (1932-) as a writer in exile, problematizing the limits between the lyrical expression of nostalgia and the writing about imperial nostalgia. Finally, I underline the fact that Vimala Devi´s dislocation represents the condition of many other migrant writers who live in-between times and cultures – the mother culture, usually lived through memory, and the culture of the western metropolis where they live their everyday lives.
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