Post Colonial Resistance in Amitav Ghosh's The Circle of Reason and The Calcutta Chromosome

Abstract

This dissertation explores post-colonial resistance to Western epistemology that is predominantly based on the discourses of rationality, science and literary realism and above all the monopoly in knowledge production. While analyzing Amitav Ghosh’s novelsThe Circle of ReasonandThe Calcutta Chromosomeas subversion of Western truth by the use of post-colonial theoretical insights, it demonstrates that ‘counter-discourse’ and ‘magic realism’ as narrative techniques subverts the Eurocentric thinking of objective investigations in science and socio- cultural understandings. Ghosh’s narrative challenges theWestern discursive practice by privileging non-Western setting and through the voice of subaltern characters like Alu and Zindi (inThe Circle of Reason) and Mangala and Laakhan (inThe Calcutta Chromosome) who advocate the ‘radically heterogeneous’ world with equality between “west” and “non-west.”