Abstract

The focal point of this paper is the concept of transnational memory and the blurred and fluctuating boundaries of ties with the nation that was once home as depicted in Evening is the Whole Day, a novel by Preeta Samarasan, part of the emergent community of new Malaysian diasporic writers. New Malaysian diasporic writers in the context of this paper are taken to refer to writers who were born in Malaysia but are now settled elsewhere in the globe, and yet are recognizably transnational in that their writings focus on the older country and memories of family, community, and a nation that once was. The discussion expands existing scholarship on diasporic memory such as Rushdie’s argument of the broken mirrored refractions by introducing the concept of another cartography of memory, that of appendages of Other memories such as fleeting images from the repertoire of literary (and historical) archives, textual tradition, and its influence on diasporic creative writing. This is framed against Arjun Appadurai’s notion of the “synchronic warehouse,” a term he has used to refer to the “politics of memory” that reside within the concept of “the past” that no longer reflects a simple return but a space which allows for the recasting, redirecting, and editing of memories. Seen in this light, the paper concludes that the novel becomes the synchronic warehouse that projects a multiple imagined perspective of the nation, reimagined in a multitude of scenes that ultimately appear distinctly anomalous.


Keywords

hybridity, imaginary homelands, motherland, transnational memory

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Kritika Kultura
Department of English
School of Humanities
Ateneo de Manila University

The Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) declares Kritika Kultura as a CHED-recognized journal under the Journal Challenge Category of its Journal Incentive Program.

International Board of Editors

Jan Baetens
Professor
Faculty of Arts
Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (Belgium)

Joel David
Professor of Cultural Studies
Inha University (South Korea)

Michael Denning
Professor of American Studies and English
Department of English
Yale University (US)

Faruk
Faculty of Cultural Sciences
Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia)

Regenia Gagnier
Professor of English
University of Exeter (UK)

Leela Gandhi
John Hawkes Professor of the Humanities and English
Brown University (US)

Inderpal Grewal
Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies
Professor of South Asian Studies, Ethnicity, Race and Migration Studies
Yale University (US)

Peter Horn
Professor Emeritus and Honorary Lifetime Fellow
University of Cape Town (South Africa)
Honorary Professor and Research Associate in German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Anette Horn
Professor of German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

David Lloyd
Distinguished Professor of English
University of California, Riverside (US)

Bienvenido Lumbera
National Artist for Literature
Professor Emeritus
University of the Philippines

Rajeev S. Patke
Director of the Division of Humanities
Professor of Humanities
Yale NUS College (Singapore)

Vicente L. Rafael
Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History
University of Washington (US)

Vaidehi Ramanathan
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Davis (US)

Temario Rivera
Professorial Lecturer
Department of Political Science
University of the Philippines

E. San Juan, Jr.
Philippines Studies Center (US)

Neferti X.M. Tadiar
Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
Barnard College (US)
Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Columbia University (US)

Antony Tatlow
Honorary Professor of Drama
Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)