Inhabiting the EdgeS: Transtextuality and Subduction

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This investigation of global dialogism engages with the transcultural writing and reading practices on the march well before our current post-colonial period. I explore how the environment of social heteroglossia found in imperial spaces catalyzes a process of penetration and stratification which explodes the ossified deposits of closed socio-linguistic systems in which literary language is often rooted. The forms of cultural and literary subduction discussed in a spectrum of works by writers ranging from Tagore to Janet Frame raise the spectre of an erosion of contexts, but hold out the promise of construction which is involved in tectonic processes.