1997年,女作家阿蘭達蒂‧洛伊以她的第一本小說《微物之神》成為史上第一位、也是最年輕的一位獲得英國布克獎(The Man Booker Prize)的印度作家。不過,她毅然暫停了前景大好的文學生涯,開始積極投入公民抗爭,諸如反對印度核子試爆、反對印度大壩計畫、反對美國出兵中東、反對美國主導的資本市場等等,更與語言學大師Noam Chomsky共同出版了反全球化的書籍,批判全球化企業對第三世界的蠶食鯨吞。
From "The Greater Common Good", Outlook, May 24, 1999
The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been home to the Dongria Kondh long before there was a country called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain. For the Kondh it’s as though god has been sold. They ask how much god would go for if the god were Ram or Allah or Jesus Christ?
'Sometimes they say the Free Market provides a level playing field -- but then when questioned, they ask us to wait for Trickle Down. But things only Trickle Down slopes don't they?'
This is with regard to the review of my book Listening to Grasshoppers that appeared in The Economist. If this letter is long, ironically it is because the factual errors in the review are so many. In an attempt to highlight my "flawed reporting and incorrect analysis" the reviewer makes some extraordinary errors and leaps of logic:
While we're still arguing about whether there's life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By democracy I don't mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.
We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11". And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.
As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the 'Bad Guys' he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on 'terrorist camps' in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.
But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America.
Arundhati Roy's first work of fiction since The God of Small Things in 1997 is an allegory, a powerful fable about Climate Change, the War on Terror and Corporate Raj
My greetings. I'm sorry I'm not here with you today but perhaps it's just as well. In times such as these, it's best not to reveal ourselves completely, not even to each other.
If you step over the line and into the circle, you may be able to hear better. Mind the chalk on your shoes.
I never met Hrant Dink, a misfortune that will be mine for time to come. From what I know of him, of what he wrote, what he said and did, how he lived his life, I know that had I been here in Istanbul a year ago I would have been among the one hundred thousand people who walked with his coffin in dead silence through the wintry streets of this city, with banners saying, "We are all Armenians", "We are all Hrant Dink". Perhaps I'd have carried the one that said, "One and a half million plus one".*
[*One-and-a-half million is the number of Armenians who were systematically murdered by the Ottoman Empire in the genocide in Anatolia in the spring of 1915. The Armenians, the largest Christian minority living under Islamic Turkic rule in the area, had lived in Anatolia for more than 2,500 years.]
"To love.
去愛
To be loved.
被愛
To never forget your own insignificance.
永遠別忘記自己有多微渺
To never get used to the unspeakable violence
永遠不要慣從於無法言喻的暴力
and the vulgar disparity of life around you.
以及你週遭對生命之不平等對待
New WorId Disorder
War is peace. So now we know.
by Arundhati Roy In These Times magazine, November 2001
As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on October 7, the U.S. government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable substitute for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks and bunker-busting missiles. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamoring for new video games.
Transcription of Arundhati Roy reading and
Ms. Roy and Howard Zinn in conversation
Lensic Performing Arts Center
Santa Fe, New Mexico
18 September 2002
December 13. The season for reopening old wounds....A hyper campaign, a mysterious TV update, a book that sifts myth from fact on the Afzal issue. Updates
'The Indians are teaching the Americans, too, how to occupy a place ... The occupation of Kashmir has taken place over years. ... In Iraq, you have 125,000 or so American troops in a situation of war, controlling 25 million Iraqis. In Kashmir, you have 700,000 Indian troops fully armed there .. and creating a situation, making it worse and worse and worse.'
TITLE: Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things: 'Real' Possibilities in Postcolonial Literature
About This Site"Arundhati Roy" echoes loud and mightily through the halls of world literary pantheons. In October 1997, her novel The God of Small Things picked up Britain's prestigious Booker Prize, billowing up a storm of fame and infamy.
keyword: psychoanalysis / abjection / Kristeva, postcolonialism, repressive state apparatus, body politics
TITLE: A Martyrology of the Abject: Witnessing and Trauma in Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Thingsp SOURCE: Ariel (Calgary, Alta.) 33 no3/4 35-60 Jl/O 2002