Romance indianos contemporâneos: vozes combatentes em chão de insurgência

Abstract

What themes arise from contemporary Indian women's narratives? Not only in India, but in the world, cultures, literatures and histories were initially shaped by male perspectives. The fiction works to be discussed in this research are: The Space Between Us (2005) by Thrity Umrigar (1961) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) by Arundhati Roy (1961). These narratives address the inequalities experienced by Indian women and man in a nation that tries to free itself from patriarchy and the asymmetric inheritance of the caste system. Although India emancipated itself from imperial power in the first half of the 20th century, it is still culturally and epistemologically connected to British power. Performing the role of intellectuals in a post-colonial India, the diasporic authors who form the corpus of this thesis point to ways for decolonization and identity reconstruction. Though the historical and sociological aspects are relevant for the analysis of Indian cultures, the research is inserted in the field of literary studies, therefore representation is the main protagonist of the investigative efforts. The theoretical framework for carrying out the research steps was rooted mainly on thematic approaches from postcolonial literature (BHABHA, 1983; SAID, 2007 and VISWANATHAN, 2015), from subaltern Indian studies (GUHA, 1988; SPIVAK , 1988 and CHAKRABARTY, 2000) and of contemporary intellectuality (MEHTA, 1998, PAWAR, 2008 and FOUCAULT, 2006). Literary representations of conflicts, oppression and multiple identity expressions are aesthetic and political cuttings and portraits of the historical context in which the Indian authors find themselves.