A Deconstructive Approach To The Calcutta Chromosome

Amitav Ghosh is one of the best-known Indian writers who write in English nowadays,and he has many faithful readers in India and some other English-speaking countries.As a science fiction written by Amish Ghosh,The Calcutta Chromosome brings Ghosh a lot of honors.In 1997,it won the Arthur C.Clarke Prize,which is the highest award for science fiction in Britain.The Calcutta Chromosome is based on Gosh's reading on Memoirs written by British surgeon Sir Ronald Ross who once served in India.Ghosh is keenly aware of the western cultural hegemonic attitude showed by Ross as a western colonialist in the Memoirs and his distorted depictions of India and its people.In The Calcutta Chromosome,Ghosh expresses his doubts about the historical authenticity of Me,moirs and he attempts to imagine or reconstruct possible historical truth from his unique perspective as an anthropologist and writer.Through the artistic transformation of historical events,Gosh offers readers with a thought-provoking sci-fi work.By applying Derrida's theory of deconstruction as a starting point,the author of this thesis explores features of deconstruction hidden in the aspect of textual form and textual meaning in Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome,so as to dig out the main purpose of resisting western cultural hegemony.By doing so,the author of this thesis aims at providing readers with a brand-new way to understand this novel.This thesis is divided into three parts:the first chapter is the introduction part,which mainly introduces Ghosh's life experience,his literary achievement and brief introduction about his novel The Calcutta Chromosome.Studies on this novel at home and abroad are also briefly summarized,so as to fully grasp the current research background and its research trends.This part also explains some key concepts like"differance," and "anti-binary opposition" in Derrida's deconstruction theory,so as to lay a theoretical foundation for the analysis of the full text.The second to the fourth chapter is the main body part.For the second chapter,it mainly explores the deconstruction of traditional writing strategies in the novel from the aspect of textual form.Ghosh makes an innovative breakthrough in the textual form in The Calcutta Chromoso,mechallenging readers,traditional reading habits by applying strategies like multiple genres,multiple-perspectives,discontinuity of time and space,and open endings.The third chapter digs into Ghosh's fundamental subversion of several traditional binary opposition concepts in this novel,such as "men and women","good and evil","science and religion""human intelligence and artificial intelligence" from the aspect of meanings.In order to have a deeper understanding of The Calcutta Chromosome,Chapter four tries to explore its literary mission.By deconstructing western centrism,Ghosh in this novel calls for construction of multiculture,so as to strongly resist western cultural hegemony.The last chapter concludes the analysis and interpretations in the previous chapters,allowing readers to get a deeper understanding of the deconstructive ideas hidden behind the words in this novel,and let them jump out from the box of traditional thinking and be able to get rid of the ideological control of western cultural hegemony eventually.By dismantling this novel from the aspects of form and meaning,Ghosh attempts to deconstruct western cultural hegemony,so as to further disclose western centrism,leading the eastern culture to walk out from the predicament of being marginalized and escape from the fate of being silenced.Gosh actively constructs a bridge for equal exchange between different cultures,so as to achieve common prosperity of the world culture.Through the deconstructive interpretation of The Calcutta Chromosome,the author of this thesis tries to make the reader understand that in the contemporary era of globalization,multicultural coexistence is the right direction for the healthy development of world culture,and it is also the way out for the prosperity of world culture in the future.