Calcutta Chromosome Research Articles

The Digital Hereafter, or: Nirvana in the Cloud

In the discussion of posthuman encounters, the focus is predominantly on robotics and the cyborg, artificial intelligence, and the implementation of technological elements into the human body. Less often explored is the complementary vision of the uploaded mind as a promise of life extension or even immortality. Nevertheless, there is, by now, quite a body of conceptual explorations, promises, warnings and also popularizations of this idea. The technological options described range from memory transfer to whole brain emulation or simulation, and they raise a multitude of theoretical, technological, philosophical and ethical concerns. Unsurprisingly, the assessment varies from enthusiastic celebration to dystopian nightmares, and the concepts have also been explored controversially in literary works. In my paper I outline the most important arguments and discuss some works of science fiction which explore visions of uploaded minds, most importantly Greg Evans’s Permutation City, Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome, and Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein.

The Interplay of Magic Realism and Historical Realism: Amitav Ghosh's Novels

This abstract delves into the captivating blend of magic realism and historical realism in the works of renowned Indian author Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh, celebrated for his historical and socio-political narratives, occasionally infuses elements of magic realism into his storytelling. Notable novels such as “The Shadow Lines,” “The Calcutta Chromosome,” and “Sea of Poppies” serve as examples where Ghosh adeptly blurs the boundaries between the magical and the real. This research paper emphasizes the diverse ways in which Ghosh explores the interplay between reality and fantasy, encouraging the readers to engage with his narratives on multiple levels and promoting discussions about the thin boundaries of literary genres. Magic realism, which is generally characterized by the inclusion of supernatural or magical elements within a realistic backdrop, challenges the distinction between the extraordinary and the ordinary. Though it is associated with Latin American literature, this genre has been embraced and adapted by writers from a variety of cultural backgrounds. However, the complexities of Ghosh’s narratives and the depth of his characterizations leave room for diverse interpretations, possibly aligning with the principles of magic realism. This paper aims to illuminate the dynamic relationship between representing facts and stimulating the imagination, it also highlights the multi-faceted nature of literary genres and the subjective lens through which readers perceive and interpret literary works.

Revisiting the voices from the Margins: A Study of Subaltern Narrative in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh delves into the subaltern narrative giving voice to marginalized people often overlooked in mainstream literature. The narrative draws on the themes of identity, power, and history through its characters and their experiences challenging traditional narratives and offers a unique perspective on the complexities of colonialism, science, and storytelling. The novel resurfaces the issues of defiance and resistance against the imperial power and its’ hegemony as depicted by Ghosh through the characters like Murugan, Mangala and Laakhan against British scientist Roland Ross and his associates. In the juncture of scientific research about the Malaria in colonial India, Ronald Ross was assisted by the Indian people, however, their contribution remained excluded in colonial historiography which Ghosh's narrative stages to revisit the colonizer's discriminatory policy. Meantime, this study triggers on the voice of the voiceless to subvert the 'orientalism' in Westerners' historiography by staging the voice of the oppressed in the domain of subaltern studies envisaged by Spivak and others. In so doing, it valorises the voice the subalterns by constituting an academic discourse for their age-longed muffled silence.

Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome: A Pluriversal Narrative to Decolonise the Past and Confront Universal Eurocentrism

The Calcutta Chromosome takes readers on a convoluted journey through time and space. At once a work of science fiction, a medical mystery, and a history of malaria research, this hybrid novel sets into rivalry India’s old-time wisdom and spirituality against Western science and English colonial presumptuousness, thus advocating transmodernity and the pluriversality put forward by critics such as Rosa María Rodriguez Magda, Enrique Dussel and Walter Mignolo, among others. This paper will analyse the way in which this novel denies the existence of a universal scientific method by deconstructing the certainties of an exclusively rationalist discourse whose discoveries have often gone hand in hand with exploitation, unequal power relations and colonization. Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance and Emmanuel Levinas’s ideas about the ethics of silence and knowledge will also be used to analyse silence as an alternative epistemological framework through which the dominant discourse can be undermined and the subaltern heard, and as a means to make amends for the injustices of the past by reclaiming the histories written by those who were made ‘others’ by the English imperial power.

Imagining Alternatives: Exploring Postcolonial Paradigms and Resistance in Indian Science Fiction Narratives

The proposed research aims to establish science fiction as a critical framework that can challenge preconceived notions of Western science fiction and provide alternative possibilities of existence. The study involves reading various SF narratives from different ages, including Sultana’s Dream (1905), Calcutta Chromosome (1995), Escape (2008), The Island of Lost Girls (2015), and The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories (2008). The goal is to show how this subgenre reflects a postcolonial society's struggle to establish a foothold in the new world order. These works present a vision of national consciousness that is influenced by the Western canon but is proud of its traditions.

Vaccine Inequities and the Legacies of Colonialism: Speculative Fiction's Challenge to Medicine.

New vaccines to prevent COVID-19 and malaria underscore the importance of scientific advances to promote public health globally. How is credit for such scientific discoveries attributed, and who benefits? The complex narrative of Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome, both historical and speculative, demonstrates how medicine has come to value particular kinds of advances over others, prompting readers to question who controls access to resources and at what cost to global populations. In Ghosh's imagined world, scientific discovery is evaluated and rewarded-and ultimately deemed necessary-for its ability to serve communal, public health needs.

TEXTUALIZING HISTORY THROUGH TRAVEL NARRATIVE IN DANCING IN CAMBODIA AND AT LARGE IN BURMA BY AMITAV GHOSH

Travel Narrative as a genre is a factual representation or rather re-creation of personal and individual anecdotes of travel experiences, that is to say the literary representation of a real travel with all its enthralling experiences. It can also be an introspection of the journey which had been completed by the author and also an objective documentation of his travel experiences. Amitav Ghosh is also one such writer. He frequently uses history in his novels and essays inculcated in travel narrative. He is passionately involved with history crossing of national and international frontiers area old theme, to which Ghosh gives a new dimension. His works, The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace and travelogues –Countdown and Dancing in Cambodia At Large in Burma brought him International fame and recognition. The aim of this paper is to analyze how Amitav Ghosh has reconstructed history of time and history of Cambodia and Myanmar. The narration of Ghosh’s travel experiences in these countries brings to the fore the complex temporal dimensions of history in Dancing in Cambodia and At Large in Burma.

Tropical Topographies: Mapping the Malarial in The Calcutta Chromosome

This paper reads colonial archives of malaria in conjunction with Amitav Ghosh’s futuristic medical thriller The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) and contends that the novel, loosely based on Sir Roland Ross, ruptures narratives of colonial expertise. The colonial expertise on malaria is embodied by Ross, an officer in the Indian Medical Service; this is in contrast with the model of expertise proposed by the novel. While Ross’s expertise is predicated on the domination of nature and controlling diseased tropical landscapes, the novel resists imperial strategies of mapping and disease control. This paper argues that The Calcutta Chromosome presents an alternative attempt to map the malarial, rewriting history by displacing actors such as Ross and instead placing two colonial subjects, Murugan and Mangala, at the centre of new mapping practices. The novel further questions the notion of ‘colonial improvement’ which malaria facilitated in imperial regimes. Deviating from the colonial history of improving the native body and landscape as a cure for malaria, the novel foregrounds subjugated subjects working at the peripheries of laboratories and scientific practices and thus subverts the notion of the ‘improved subject’ by proposing the idea of the mutational, transformational ‘Calcutta chromosome.’

The Calcutta Chromosome: An Acknowledgement of Indigenous Caliber and Extrapolation upon the History of Malaria Parasite Discovery

Amitav Ghosh novel The Calcutta Chromosome: a Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery is considered, - an outstanding literary work in which the writer reveals a discourse of science versus counter-science from the earlier world of social, cultural and ethnical history of Indian subcontinent. India is home to the oldest continuous civilization, nevertheless, the long invasive rule of the Mughals and the Britishers has framed minds to undervalue the indigenous knowledge, practices, customs and discourses. Amitav Ghosh novel denies the Western supremacy in every field and puts a question mark in the invention of Anopheles maculipennis as the cause of malaria. Dr. Ronald Ross received the prestigious Nobel Prize in 1902 for his discovery of malaria parasite but Ami- tav Ghosh supports the contribution of Indian assistants Mangala and Laakhan who were not acknowledged by the British researchers. The novel reflects a postcolonial approach to interpret Western scientific mechanism, posits the question to unethical exploitation of native workers by the English and gives voice to the traditional knowledge of the subalterns. An integral part of Ghoshs approach in this novel is to illuminate the richness of ideas and complexity of Indigenous life, and to create a place where aboriginals are acknowledged for their remarkable contributions.

New poetics of postcolonial relations: global genetic kinship in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

Conceptions of genetic kinship have recently emerged as a powerful new discourse through which to trace and imagine connections between individuals and communities around the globe. This article argues that,...

Deconstructing Western Hegemony and Voicing Silenced Histories in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome, a speculative novel which blends Western medical science with Eastern stories of ghosts, magic and immortality, criticizes the Eurocentric discourse of science and offers the possibilities of an alternative history from a subaltern perspective. By providing a logical and yet mystical order that privileges the marginalized, the novel casts doubt on the nature of knowledge. The aim of the article is to show that by substituting silenced protagonists (Eastern) and their ancient cultural practices for the ‘noble’ (Western) practices, and by providing agency to the subaltern by combining elements of myth, mysticism and the supernatural, Ghosh questions the superiority and nature of Western rationality. By providing an alternative life story of the scientist Roland Ross, where the subalterns Mangala and Laakhan have better knowledge of the malaria transmission process than Ross himself, Ghosh suggests the greater legitimacy of Eastern esotericism and mysticism over Western science. Thus, by allowing the story of the counter-science group to surface through the research of Murugan, Ghosh suggests the existence of a secretive historical records which have been removed from the official records of Western medical science. Finally, by contesting the idea that only Western science offers the ability to liberate humanity, Ghosh hints at the existence of alternative possibilities.

Borders and silence as forms of knowledge in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

Forms of knowledge and our understanding of the world are central concerns in Amitav Ghosh's fiction. His novels often deconstruct epistemology derived from the Western philosophical tradition, with the aim of pointing at its relativity in spite of its claim to universality. This essay wants to demonstrate how The Calcutta Chromosome (1996) closely connects the production of an alternative form of knowledge (the counter-science) with a different way of perceiving and conceiving space. Focusing specifically on Calcutta's urban space, it will examine the correlation between space and epistemology in the novel through three spatial and gnoseological categories: borders, the labyrinth, and, finally, networks.

Western Medicine in India as a Colonial Case in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

Western Medicine in India as a Colonial Case in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

Emplotting the Postcolonial: Epistemology and Narratology in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

The plot of Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome is so complex that there is little consensus among the scholars on what actually happens in the novel. Following in the footsteps of Tagore, Satyajit Rai, Renu, and J.P.S. Uberoi, the novelist dramatizes the encounter between Western science, with its epistemology, and Indian tradition. Ghosh’s novel challenges the relentless West-driven search for knowledge, epitomized by the supercomputer named Ava. Only different epistemological premises, based on silence, can counteract Western rationalism. The literary technique mirrors this preoccupation in that it tells a story from two different viewpoints, one of them remaining silent throughout and emphasizing the agency of narrators. In order to do so, the author must write about something of which he remains ignorant. This paradoxical condition calls for a revision of the traditional writing chart, so that it is necessary to include the figure of the archiauthor behind the traditional implied author. This may explain a reticent narrative that heavily relies on the reader’s intelligence. Furthermore, my narratological reading highlights two themes formerly neglected by scholars, namely that subalterns’ cosmopolitism in the future is rooted in our colonial past and that the interpersonal transference envisaged by the novel merges different people in one body, thus challenging the Western obsession with individualism.

JAS Round Table on Amitav Ghosh,The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Amitav Ghosh, perhaps Asia's most prominent living author, moves among many genres and across vast territories. His fiction—The Circle of Reason(1986),The Shadow Lines(1988),The Glass Place(2000),The Hungry Tide(2004), andThe Ibistrilogy—takes us from Calcutta where he was born in 1956 to the Arabian Sea, Paris, London, and back again to the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and beyond. His nonfiction—In an Antique Land(1992),Dancing in Cambodia and at Large in Burma(1998), andCountdown(1999)—rests on a PhD in social anthropology from Oxford. He went to Alexandria, Egypt, for his dissertation research. His science fiction,The Calcutta Chromosome, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1997. His essays—published inThe New Yorker, The New Republic, andThe New York Timesand collected inThe Iman and the Indian(2002)—address major issues such as fundamentalism. Indeed, most of his work addresses big questions, exploring the nature of communal violence, the traces of love and longing across generations, manifold religious manifestations, and the systematic pain of colonial oppression. The deep and abiding theme of many works is anthropogenic environmental damage, now boldly and directly addressed inThe Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable(2016). Married to accomplished fellow author Deborah Baker, whose work traces the Asian peregrinations of Allen Ginsberg, the literary milieu of Laura Riding, and the complexity of Islamic conversion, Ghosh has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Queens College, and Delhi University. He has won more prizes and honorary doctorates, and been a fellow at more famous institutions and a distinguished visitor in more far-flung places, than you can shake a stick at. He even has two homes: Brooklyn and Goa. In short, Ghosh's profile makes you wonder if there might not be more than one of him.

Globalization, Utopia, and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope

Globalization, Utopia, and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope

Influences and Varied Perspectives of Colonial Science and Technology in Amitav Ghosh’s “The Imam and the Indian” and The Calcutta Chromosome

The colonialists’ advances in terms of establishing complete political, economic and often cultural hold in the colonies came with their concurrent advances in scientific and technological arenas. The technological advances of the colonizers were also a means of showcasing their superiority over the colonized, and in turn, holding the colonized in awe of the colonizers’ scientific inventions. The focus of this paper is on how the technology of the colonizers played a role in the making of the modern world, and the way it has been reflected in literature and science thriller writing. Taking Amitav Ghosh as an example, it will also focus on the varied viewpoints and encounters of the colonized people with the technological advancements of the colonizers.

The Chromosome as Concept and Metaphor in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

The Chromosome as Concept and Metaphor in Amitav Ghosh’s <i>The Calcutta Chromosome</i>

Not Just Prose

This essay argues that when reading Amitav Ghosh's Anglophone novel The Calcutta Chromosome we should be attentive to the genre of the non-Anglophone short story in South Asia. Doing so offers the reader insights into the current limitations of postcolonial studies, as well as a vision for what avenues the field might pursue in the future. Postcolonial studies has come under frequent attack for the excessive attention it bestows upon the novel, a gesture which in turn generates readings linking the novel to questions of nationhood and modernity. Taking this critique as its point of departure, this essay deliberately engages the Indian short stories that Ghosh references in his novel. The short story is a genre whose specific literary qualities are all too often neglected by subsuming them under the blanket term ‘prose’. This essay shows that attention to the short story is crucial not only because of the important role it plays in South Asian literary history, but also because it allows, indeed requires, the postcolonial literary critic to ask of it an entirely different series of questions than those that would be appropriate for the novel.

Mutating Toward the Future: The Convergence of Utopianism, Postcolonial SF, and the Postcontemporary Longing for Form in Amitav Ghosh’s the Calcutta Chromosome

This article examines the way that secrecy and silence are raised from the level of colonial imposition to postcolonial methodology in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome. Drawing on Ghosh’s claim that any attempt at forming a counter-modernity to the experience of imperial modernization would necessarily have had to operate without record, it argues that silence and secrecy form a counter-hegemonic practice to the instrumentalizing form of Western rationality. As such, the novel performs a postcolonial decentering of futuricity from Western capitalist epistemology, eschewing a mastery of the past to reopen the possibility of a future beyond imperial logic.