Fascination and Repulsion: Otherness in Calcutta Fiction

Otherness and Self: Theoretical Framework

Peter Stallybrass and Allon White (1986) describe a sociological dynamic by which a sense of subjective superiority in a dominant social class is constructed through a process of abjection. In the aesthetic domain, "high culture" is constituted by identifying what counts as "low culture," then disparaging and rejecting it. In a similar manner, otherness can extend to racial, erotic, legal, health, and economic domains: an (often unmarked) sense of "whiteness" is derivative of identifying non-white "people of color" against which to form the distinction; sexual "normality" is defined against sexual deviance; the innocent are defined against the criminal; the able-bodied in relation to the disabled; the rich against the poor. In the era of French and British colonization of Asia and the Near East, the Western self was defined against the "inferior," "childlike," "impoverished," and "depraved" Oriental Other (Said, 1979).

In short, the subjective self can bolster its own social status by identifying a contrasting group as "non-self" and then rejecting them as "other." The self is always implicitly defined against the other, just as a perpetrator is defined in relation to a victim: without a pair of actors to inhabit both irreducible elements of the "penal couple," there can be no crime (Mendelsohn, 1956, p. 26).

Stallybrass and White contend that social and aesthetic categories can be ranked along certain evaluative lines: high and low, self and other, good and evil. These basic divisions apply to concrete symbolic domains such as the human body or geographical space, but also to more abstract domains such as social relationships and psychology (1986, p. 276). Although these evaluative hierarchies of self and other can admit of gradations, the starkest contrast is between the high and the low, the most exalted and the basest. Stallybrass and White further contend that sublime literature, with its lofty moral ends, deploys debasement and degradation to provide a point of contrast differentiating heroes from villains (Stallybrass & White, 1986, p. 277).

The producers of high cultural forms position themselves as arbiters of the dominant value system, defining what constitutes the "low" in contrast to their own privileged position. Furthermore, this social interactionist model of hierarchical distinctions does not claim that all social actors are equal in their capacity to fill a central or marginalized role. As Edward Said's framework of Orientalism and David Spurr's (1993) commentary on Western surveillance of the Oriental Other make clear, "the gaze upon which the journalist so faithfully relies for knowledge marks an exclusion as well as a privilege: the privilege of inspecting, examining, of looking at, by its nature excludes the journalist from the human reality constituted as the object of observation" (p. 13). Through the act of observing and reporting, members of the dominant group tacitly assume the power to define the terms of the relationships in the hierarchy of symbolic social distinctions.

Both Dan Simmons (1985) in his horror novel Song of Kali and Dominique Lapierre (1985) in his journalistic novel The City of Joy belong to this Orientalist tradition of presenting the Other as spectacle. The authors describe the journeys of white men into the space of the Oriental Other, framed as a quest or a challenge within self-imposed constraints. The main storytelling preoccupation for both novels is alterity and other space. Calcutta becomes a realm of social symbols in which to stage the shifting, transformative dynamics of Western versus Other. For Simmons, the protagonist Robert Luczak's sense of self is violated by the perfectly evil embodiment of the radical Other in the form of the goddess Kali, the novel's main antagonist. Lapierre, in contrast, imagines an ideally good and noble Other in the Indian peasant and slum-dweller Hasari Pal, who contrasts with the saintly Polish priest Stephan Kovalski — two outsiders who venture into the slums of Calcutta from different starting points and for different ends.

Western Protagonists and the Space of the Other

Simmons's protagonist, Robert C. Luczak, is depicted as an educated, white male member of the American creative class. Luczak is employed as a journalist by Harper's magazine. He is self-conscious about his privileged position, and is socially aware enough to ironically distance himself from WASP pretensions. Luczak describes himself as a "Chicago Polack" who is married to an "Indian princess" (p. 4).

The pretext for Luczak's trip to India is to write a piece for Harper's on M. Das, a celebrated Indian poet whose new collection of writings is poised for publication in the United States. In an introductory scene, Luczak appeals to Indian high culture to defend a stanza from one of Das's poems against charges of vulgarity leveled by his editor, Abe. Commenting on Das's submission, Abe reads to Luczak: "according to the translator's copy [the stanza] means, 'Maddened by lust, Kama and Rati fuck like dogs.' Sweet. It has a distinctive lilt to it, Bobby. Sort of early Robert Frost-ish." Luczak defends the artistic merit of the poem with an affectation of cultural sensitivity to Hindu civilization, admiring how the poet blurs the boundaries between low folk art and high Vedic literature: "It's part of a traditional Bengali song… Notice how Das has embedded the rhythm of it in the general passage. He shifts from classical Vedic form to folk-Bengali and then back to Vedic" (p. 8). Later in the narrative, Luczak turns considerably less generous in his judgment of Indian culture.

Luczak journeys into Calcutta as a journalist assigned to write an article on a contemporary literary figure for an upper-middle-class American audience. He feels entitled to take from Indian society what he finds of value — a beautiful wife, a lovely daughter, the rights to publish a work of literary merit — but is free to visit the country for a short stay in a high-end hotel, then leave when he has had enough adventure. In contrast, Lapierre's two main protagonists, Hasari Pal and Stephan Kovalski, are drawn to Calcutta precisely because of the harsh economic realities that Simmons's protagonist finds most disturbing: the Indian peasant Hasari out of financial need and the Polish priest Kovalski out of religious idealism.

Lapierre's Indian protagonist, Hasari Pal, confronts his own version of the low-Other as he undergoes a transformation from a proud, rural peasant farmer to a lowly rickshaw puller, beholden to mob bosses who exploit his labor. Although the narrative gives considerable space to following the history of the Pal family from their own perspective, the political viewpoint of Lapierre avoids subaltern critique. Hasari and his family endure repeated demotions in their status and sense of self as they establish themselves in the "City of Joy." For example, within a short time after the family's arrival in the city, Hasari finds he lacks the funds even to buy bananas to feed his family. Hasari's wife suggests they send their young daughter to beg in front of the train station. Hasari rejects this as a supreme humiliation, saying, "we are peasants, not beggars" (p. 25).

The Pals resist the abhorrent idea of broaching the peasant/beggar distinction for several days, before the threat of hunger forces the parents to send their children to beg from wealthy travelers as they exit their taxis. In Lapierre's world, this first act of humiliation, and the many to follow, are portrayed as fortifications of the human spirit — a purging away of pride as a means of entry into the joyous mass of suffering humanity. For in Lapierre's world, whatever Hasari becomes, he will be of no less intrinsic value, and will be cared for by the surrounding community: "In these slums people actually put love and mutual support into practice. They knew how to be tolerant of all creeds and castes, how to give respect to a stranger, how to show charity toward beggars, cripples, lepers, and even the insane. Here the weak were helped, not trampled upon. Orphans were instantly adopted by their neighbors and old people were cared for and revered by their children" (Lapierre, 1985, p. 40).

Thus, from the perspective of the bottom rung of Indian society, Lapierre contends that the self/other dichotomy, if not fully eradicated, at least becomes practically irrelevant. Lapierre's slum dwellers refuse to entertain invidious distinctions between self and other. The familiar as well as the stranger, the healthy and the diseased, the old and the young — all are taken in and cared for in one harmonious community of the urban poor. In a society of unfortunates who all must struggle simply to survive against great odds, no one is rejected as "marginal." The denizens of Calcutta's slums, Lapierre tells us, "had reconstructed the life of their villages in urban exile" (p. 41).

Stephan Kovalski, an expatriate Polish priest, is the main European protagonist of Lapierre's novel. Originally written in French for publication in France and translated within a year of publication into Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, and English, many readers may have identified most closely with Kovalski as the central character, though the third-person omniscient narrative alternates between Kovalski's and Hasari's stories.

Kovalski's sense of self and other was formed at an early age by an overriding desire to seek social justice. This commitment to helping the poor was reinforced by his Roman Catholicism and strengthened in the aftermath of his father's suicide. Kovalski's father had been badly maimed in a violent confrontation with police during a coal miners' rebellion over low pay and poor working conditions. Following this incident and a period in prison, his father became radicalized and plotted acts of terrorism as a member of a militant Marxist League. After a series of struggles with the authorities, Kovalski's father hanged himself in a prison cell.

Upon learning of his father's death, young Kovalski shut himself in his room to meditate over a picture of the Shroud of Turin his father had given him at his First Communion. When he resolved to become a missionary, he explained this as born of "a desire to achieve by other means what [his father] had attempted to accomplish by violence" (p. 45).

Kovalski's central drive to fight on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged Other is thus central to his sense of self. His fascination with the non-European Other is an extension of his life mission. The struggling and vulnerable Other provides Kovalski with an opportunity to act on his saintly ideals. The poorer and more wretched the Other, the greater the occasion they present for the priest to perform supreme acts of charity and humility.

Both novels use the domain of physical space as a contrast between Western and Other. The Luczaks reside in a middle-class neighborhood in Exeter, New Hampshire. Luczak describes their home as "clean and open as a Scandinavian designer's dreams, all gleaming bare wood, comfortable modular seating, immaculately white walls, and works of art illuminated by recessed lighting," and contrasts this with his Indian wife Amrita's childhood home in Delhi: "bar walls encrusted with grime and ancient handprints, open windows, rough sheets, lizards scrabbling across the walls at night, the cluttered cheapness of everything" (Simmons, 1985, p. 16). Thus the basic contrast of the novel — between clean, white, American self and dirty, dark, Indian Other — is introduced from the outset.

Lapierre's Western protagonist Kovalski, in contrast, idealizes the Other, desiring to enter their space and participate in their suffering. While still in Europe, Kovalski identified with displaced workers. He came to think of the North Africans, Senegalese, Turks, and Yugoslavs who visited his family home as members of his own family. A challenge from a Senegalese immigrant was formative in his desire to leave Europe and embrace the Other: "You're always saying you're close to us but do you really know anything about us? Why don't you go live for a while in a shantytown or in our poor countryside? Then you'd have a better idea of why we were forced to leave and come here to break up stones all day at the bottom of a mine" (p. 46).

Kovalski took this challenge to heart and chose to devote his life to living among the poor as a missionary. In his youthful idealism, he describes the allure of poverty in glowing terms:

India! A subcontinent with exceptional potential wealth — yet where areas and social groups of overwhelming poverty survived. A land of intense spirituality and savage racial, political, and religious conflicts. A land of saints like Gandhi, Aurobindo, Ramakrishna, and Vivekananda, and of spiritual leaders who were sometimes odiously corrupt. A land that manufactured rockets and satellites but where eight of ten of its inhabitants had never traveled faster than their oxen could pull their carts. A land of slums of Bombay or Calcutta. A land where the sublime often stood side by side with the very worst this world can offer, but where both elements were always more vibrant, more human, and ultimately more attracting than anywhere else. (Lapierre, 1985, p. 47)

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