Re-orientalism and Representation: Aman Sethi Talks About Delhi

Abstract

In the (re)presentation of India by Indian authors writing in English there is an overlooked, long-standing tradition of sterling commentaries produced by social analysts. In the best of that tradition which blurs the divide between the literary and journalistic, Aman Sethi, in A Free Man (2012), crosses significant class boundaries to represent Delhi with disconcerting rawness through stories of its itinerant labourers. This article investigates whether Sethi’s innovative methods of data collection and modes of representation used to deconstruct the alterity of subaltern representation are able to resist re-orientalism and address the crisis of authenticity in Indian writing in English (IWE); or whether re-orientalism is inexorably reiterated as a result of the distance and difference in positionality between author and subject. Focusing on representation via the form of non-fiction narrative, it discusses the extent to which form and authorial intention to avoid strategic exoticism and staged marginality can circumvent the pitfalls of re-orientalism when representing the subaltern.