An Alien Nation

Bannerjee, Suparno

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2012.16

Postcoloniality and the Alienated Subject in Vandana Singh's Science Fiction

Bannerjee, Suparno

Extrapolation (2012), 53, (3), 283–306.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2012.16
Language: English
Pages: 24

Abstract

One major theme in recent Anglophone Indian science fiction is the specter of an alienated postcolonial subject caught in the flux of historical eddies. Such subjects are torn by the forces of a rapid industrial progress, caught in the lure of immigrating to the "first world" and by the traps of traditional Indian values, resulting in severe anxiety and multilevel alienation. Vandana Singh uses science fictional strategies to make the reader confront these estrangements from a different perspective that is less constrained than realistic narrative. Singh's narratives also seek alternatives to such alienated existences through radical estrangements of normal space and time, probably suggesting that only a radical shift in social consciousness can engender a hope for dis-alienation of these marginalized subjects.

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