Browsing by Author "Sharma, Laxman"
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Item ‘Black Skin, White Masks’: Treatment of Slavery in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World(Department of English, 2010) Sharma, LaxmanThis research based on Edward P. Jones’s fiction The Known World is an effort to underscore the complexities inherent in African American society: Jones portrays the humiliating condition of slaves at the hand of freed slaves after emancipation in America. The freed slaves continued the legacy of keeping slaves though their former masters-the whites-had all in all given up this malpractice. The freed slaves inherited this tradition as if it was the African culture. The first chapter introduces the history of African American literature along with its implication and consequences in Jones’s novel. The second chapter brings out the instances of humiliation of slaves in The Known World vis-à-vis the critical insights in African American criticism as expressed in the scholarly writings of renowned critics in the discipline. The research concludes to prove the hypothesis that Jones’s novel differs from other African American novels in that it illumines the tension between African American communities in the process of emancipation.Item Industrial Versus Environmental Culture: A Critique of Anthropocentrism in Nadine Gordimer's Get A Life(Department of English, 2012) Sharma, LaxmanThis research work attempts to show how Nadine Gordimer's Get A Life advocates for environmental culture rejecting the logic of industrial culture. The research focuses on how different projects launched in the name of progress and development of African indigenous landscape turn out to be self destructive. The anthropocentric culture gives prominence to the technologies that result in the environmental destruction. In the name of development like construction of toll roads, nuclear reactors, dams and industrial states, the natural world is destroyed. The displacement of Amadiba village because of the toll highway and the destruction of the Okavango delta's natural creation which can be seen from the outer space in the novel are examples of environmental destruction by industrial culture. Through the eco-conscious characters like Paul, Derek and Thapelo and their constant opposition of the noxious projects proposed in South African land, the novel rejects industrialization thereby advocating the bio-centric worldview. The existence of human beings as well as the planet is ensured only when the nature is preserved.