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Call for new aesthetics of resistance

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM. Sept. 13. There is a pressing need for a new kind of literature and a new aesthetics of resistance, the secretary of the Kendra Sahitya Akademi, K. Satchidanandan, has said.

He said this at the valedictory function of the three-day writers' seminar, `Young Voices' organised by the Akademi, here this evening.

Most delegates to the seminar were of the view that there was a movement towards everyday language among new writers. This is reflected in the use of everyday language by these writers in poetry, short story and novels. These writers do not also have a central figure or a central voice which guides them. This is actually a kind of emancipation which makes literature more democratic, he said.

Concern

Many writers expressed concern over the construction of new worlds based on caste and gender. For the young writer of today, the existential questions posed by the modernist movement have taken on a new social relevance; in the realm of politics, there is a shift from macro-politics to micro or personal politics. Young writers have also moved away from the realist mode of writing and are experimenting with both western and Indian models of narration.

The deliberations of the seminar have made it very clear that regionalism and nativism have made a strong comeback today as is evident from the fact that young writers are dealing more with local or regional problems as opposed to their predecessors who wrote about national or international problems. The new writers are searching for a new paradigm of criticism, but do not appear to have found one, he said.

In the discussion on short story and theatre held earlier in the day, Malayalam critic N. Sasidharan said the "export-quality" theatre practised and propagated by a leading Malayalam theatre personality had nothing to do with reality and only had certain patterns of visual charm. Literary quality

In his address, poet Keki N. Daruwalla said literature would ultimately be judged by its literary quality and not by whether the book was about Dalits or about feminism. There was no difference in the issues that concern young writers, irrespective of whether they write in English or in any Indian language, he said.

Telugu critic Vasireddy Naveen spoke of the disconnect between urban and rural writers in Andhra and how the former never wrote about starvation deaths or about the suicide of farmers. Malayalam short story writer B. Murali spoke about the need for young writers to overcome the influence of modernism in fiction.

Kannada critic R. Sasidhar said the continuous dismantling of the socialist state has created a hedonistic society which is helping liberalisation to thrive.

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