Mapping Postcolonial Masculinity in Sarnath Banerjee’s The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers

Abstract

Sarnath Banerjee’s second graphic novel The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers (New Delhi: Penguin, 2007) offers a new perspective on postcolonial masculinity in South Asia, embroiled simultaneously in the crises of postcolonial nation formation and in the creation of diasporic South Asian identity. In both instances, postcolonial masculinity is represented to be in a state of deep anxiety, camouflaged by a superficial performance of aggression, and predicated on patriarchal privilege and the objectification of women. In colonial India, masculinity is performed through mimicry: as the citizens of a decolonized nation mimic the former colonial rulers, they subvert many assumptions of manliness and effeminacy and challenge the power structure of colonialism. In this narrative, the haunting figure of the unaccommodated religious and ethnic minority remains a constant presence in colonial and postcolonial India as well as in the global metropolis. In colonial Calcutta, Abravanel is the wandering nomadic Jew, who cannot be accommodated in the transition to the modern nation state in Europe. Digital Dutta in present-day Calcutta remains a metonymic reminder for various groups of men who are marginal in global cities of the early twenty-first century.