“Effable Nature in Unheard Stories”: Tishani Doshi’s Poetics of Discovery

Juan Ignacio  Oliva

doi:http://doi.org/

Abstract

This article aims to study the multiple nature metaphors used in Tishani Doshi’s poetry to convey messages of understanding and epiphany. Born in 1975 in Madras (now Chennai), Doshi is an Indian author and academic who has gained indisputable reputation as a novelist and poet, with other cultural and artistic interests like dancing and writing journal articles. She is especially devoted to narrating the urges of contemporary human existence, and to defending class, gender, and racial rights violated by capitalist patriarchal anthropocentrism, all while embracing the aesthetic beauty of artistic creation as a weapon to change the world. Therefore, in her writings, Doshi makes use of subtle environmental elements (with an emphasis on animal and vegetal metaphors) to be able to speak about the ineffability of being, without discarding ideological urges and liminal tensions. Thus, Doshi pushes to the limit the essence of poetry in a self-quest to discover essential truths and cultural nuances. Hers is therefore a poetics of revelations, darkened by the oxide patina of everyday conventions and stereotypes, that needs to be polished and moulded in the hands of bards.

Keywords

ecopoetry, ecotones, environmental drives, permabodies, poetics of revelations, rhizomatic nature, Tishani Doshi

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

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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)

“Effable Nature in Unheard Stories”: Tishani Doshi’s Poetics of Discovery

Juan Ignacio Oliva: Universidad de La Laguna

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