An even later reflection...

The “Seepersad & Sons: Naipaulian Creative Synergies” conference was held at the UWI St. Augustine’s Open Campus from October 28^th to 30^th, 2015 and although my plan was to attend the opening sessions on the 28^th and all those scheduled for the 29^th, this was not to be. I made it to the final session on the 30^th and caught the following three presentations in Session 6: “The Naipauls’ Karma” by Ms. Fariza Mohammed, “Spaces Created by A Way in the World” by Mr. Varistha Persad, and “Sex and the Naipaul Brothers” by Ms. Meghorn Cleghorn.

It was something of a relief to discover that a number of the presenters had explicitly articulated their topics around various theoretical frameworks that were familiar to me. In the paper “Spaces Created by A Way in the World”, Mr. Persad applies techniques of postmodern criticism to his examination of the V. S. Naipaul novel, and goes to on explore Naipaul’s treatment of real, imagined and re-imagined spaces in the novel through the lens of geocriticism, a term/theory that was new to me. In “On Literary Cartography: Narrative as a Spatially Symbolic Act”, Robert T. Tally defines geocriticism thus:

An approach to narrative as a spatially symbolic act [that] enables us to navigate literature and the world in interesting new ways, by asking different questions, exploring different territories, and discovering different effects. As writers map their worlds, so readers or critics may engage with these narrative maps in order to orient ourselves and make sense of things in a changing world (Tally).

In “Sex and the Naipaul Brothers”, Meghorn Cleghorn finds in the works of V.S. and Shiva Naipaul a critique of the postcolonial Caribbean with regard to the existence of perverse sexuality in the Hindu community, with a focus on sado-masochism and incest, while “The Naipauls’ Karma” by Fariza Mohammed examines the concept of karma as represented in V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas and Shiva Naipaul’s Fireflies. Mohammed touches upon a number of significant issues in postcolonial criticism. The paper explores the tensions between karma which may be interpreted as simply fate, and which cripples many in the postcolonial Hindu community with passive resignation and lack of responsibility for one’s life, versus karma that encompasses responsibility for one’s fate in the sense that good actions will bring rewards and negative actions will be punished—the emphasis being on taking intentional action. According to this presenter, the main characters' rejection of metanarratives and focus on the “mininarratives” of agency within the contexts of the novels is an apparent embrace of a postmodern ethos on the part of the Naipauls.

I have been deeply suspicious of “theory” with respect to literary works, but found the exploration of cultural and critical theory in the LITS 6007 course and in the conference presentations  I attended to be surprisingly enjoyable and stimulating. Theory addresses the pressing concerns of thinking humanity as we seek to make sense of ourselves and the world, and I look forward to furthering my knowledge in this field, moreso since I am in the process of discovering new (to me) and intriguing approaches to literary criticism such as ecocriticism, ecofeminism and geocriticism, approaches which appear to merge the things about which I am passionate—literature, philosophy, ecology and women’s issues.

A rather late observation

The conference “Seepersad and Sons” offered critical insight into the world of the Naipaul’s. However, there were challenges in understanding the content of the presentation due to the difficulties in transmission. The microphones were having issues for the first two days; this blurred any kind of signification. Therefore, despite the scholarly presentations given at the Naipaul conference, it would be remiss of me to speak on which I did not hear properly. Although, I did hear properly for the creative panel at the Mayor’s office in Chaguanas, I would like to point my attention to the third day.

On the Third Day, I Heard Better: I make my very short observation here.

The presentation done by Dr Hwyel Dix of Bournemouth University was particularly interesting. His paper was entitled: "From tonka beans to magic seeds: V.S. Naipaul’s Late Career Fiction of Self-Retrospect". Dr Dix consults Edward Said's book On Late Fiction to define this concept of lateness but he comes up short. Dr Dix asserts that Said doesn't tell us what lateness is but he tells us what it feels like. He went on to say that Said posits that later works are stylistically resistant to their audiences; they possess the negation of conformity, and art not in favor of reality. Dr Dix then moved on to speak about how he framed his research. He said that he accidentally read the work of Career Counseling by Mark Savickas and the career construction theories of practitioners such as, Kobus Maree, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and Larry Cochran. He tries to propose a new theory of authorship through which Naipaul can be read. I place Dr Dix's reading of Naipaul into the New Historicist school of criticism, who according to Peter Barry, "juxtapose literary and non-literary texts , reading the former in light of the latter".

What struck me was not necessarily Dr Dix's presentation but the discussion that revolved around it. The definition of lateness was thought of by Professor Barbara Lalla as biological lateness, a kind of tiredness associated with old age, where the writer really doesn't care about the kind of critique he gets (which was not true about Naipaul since Professor Ramchand noted that he (Naipaul) would not have appreciated harsh criticism). Dr Dix then stated that a late work can be done by someone in their 30's as well, so he doesn't believe that one can really describe lateness. If, however, a work is being described with terms that are ambiguous, how can one come to terms with what is being described? Here we witness the "warring of signification” as Barbara Johnson described in her book The Critical Difference.

 Personally, what I can take away from the conference was the passion and curiosity with which the work of the Naipaul's were discussed (the presentations I heard of course). I believe such useful dialogue is necessary to create a robust  forum for emerging and established academics and scholars.

The conference proved to be a bitter sweet experience for me because  I was

unable due to the previous commitments, to attend on Thursday 29^th, which from the feedback I

received from my colleagues, was very interesting and controversial, and also on the morning of

Friday 30^th. I would have particularly liked to hear the contributions of Dr Raymond Ramcharitar and

Mr Shastri Maharaj. On the positive side I enjoyed the presentations of Prof Aaron Eastley

on the writings of Seepersad Naipaul, and the presentations of the afternoon of Friday 30^th  by Ms

Megahan Cleghorn, Ms Fariza Mohammed and Mr. Varistha Persad. I also enjoyed the closing

ceremony at the Naipaul House in St. James, where Akal, the sister of the writer, read the preface to

the latest edition of the novel ‘A Bend in the River’, which was written by V.S himself, and which Mrs

Naipaul-Akal said she had never read before her very recent purchase this edition. This preface was

very interesting because it spoke about the process that led to the writing of this particular novel. A

process that mystified Mr Naipaul himself, because it was a bit haphazard, and a lot of

the inspiration came for his dreams.