Centre for English Studies, JNU
Sea of Poppies: A Diasporic Construct
The talk will be based on the fifth chapter of the monograph Negotiating Capability and Diaspora: a Philosophical Politics. This chapter is an engagement and dialogue between Amartya Sen’s theory of capability and the Bengali novelist Amitav Ghosh’s vision of diaspora in the light of his novel Sea of Poppies. I see a distinct connection between the two authors as the theory of capability works as a twofold theory to uncover discrimination of underdogs, immigrants, and people of diaspora to work as a positive willpower to achieve one’s goal, if one could learn to inculcate it positively.
BIOGRAPHY : Ashmita Khasnabish, Ph.D., currently teaches at Lasell College and has held research positions in MIT, Brandeis and at Brown University for the last two decades. She has published three monographs: Jouissance as Ananda: Indian Philosophy, Feminist Theory and Literature, (2003/2006), Humanitarian Identity and The Political Sublime: Intervention of a Postcolonial Feminist(2009) and most recently Negotiating Capability and Diaspora: a Philosophical Politics (2014/2016). Dr. Khasnabish has taught at various colleges/universities in Massachusetts and lectured widely in Europe and in India, Canada, and USA. Her edited volume “Postcoloniality, Diaspora and Globalization: What’s Next?” is coming out in 2018.