Abstract
Distorted values based on cultural pluralism found in modern society seem to be deeply affected by the impact of neoliberal polity. The interlinking of situational conflict with psychological and materialistic conflicts in modern individuals has become the root of Postmodern Vertigo. Pro-capitalist attributes of modern societies have created a generation of individuals who involve themselves in unnecessary consumerist activities that further isolate them. The postmodernist protagonist hence in Hassan’s words, “only disconnects; fragments are all he pretends to trust. His ultimate opprobrium is "totalization"-any synthesis whatever, social, epistemic, even poetic.” (505) The situation is made even more complex when the problem arrives in semi-developed nations like India.
This paper hence aims to study the cause behind such disillusionments in protagonists of literature. Focusing on Adiga’s Booker winning text, The White Tiger, the paper shall study how urban spaces allow protagonists the privilege of isolating themselves and the contribution these spaces have in their disillusionment. The paper will also study how neo-liberalism has further aggravated Postmodern Vertigo among characters that are simply a narration of reality. Modern analysts like Nesher and Hartweiger will be attributed in the light of Baudrillardian, Derridian and Chomsky’s philosophies with underlying interpretations of the text.
Keywords: Urban Spaces, Neo-liberalism, Postmodern Vertigo, power structures, consumerism
I
It is not difficult to realise that the post-liberalised contemporary urban society has undergone intense changes with respect to “consumerism, international elitism, multicultural practices and free individual choices” as Veena V. suggests. Modernist aspects of marginalisation, pessimism and ideology being carried forward to Postmodern, cosmopolitan socio-literary paradigms, have set off a new race of “half-baked men” as Adiga calls them, into the new world. Camouflaged in the twenty first century, these heroes and anti-heroes often discuss the flaws of a society where moral standards, religious beliefs, market policies, marginalisation and related issues are questioned. Such is the character of a Postmodern text that it competes with its own self bringing in Derridean interpretations and chaotic fluidities to its readers.
Globalisation and open market strategies, especially of the West, have created a socio-political, postcolonial and cultural dominance on South Asian countries like India. Scholars like Hartweiger have understood such control that has led to unfair, disproportionate cosmopolitanism where a single world is imagined wearing only the masks of the West.
“The historically unparalleled amount of contact between peoples generated by globalization has spawned a new set of problems for our global community. Rather than bringing individuals together to embrace difference as such, globalization’s centrifugal forces often reduce or assimilate difference into dominant cultures, creating intensely asymmetrical power structures.” (04)
As a consequence we see the birth of hybrid cosmopolitan identities that are a product of Western hegemony despite living in different parts of the world. To further comprehend the mechanical production of such identities, it must be noted that contemporary global societies are controlled by factors of the market and that consumption, particularly; conspicuous consumption, has become the sole driver of culture today. This brings us to Baudrillardian philosophies that define consumption to be the foundation of a capitalist society where wants are constructed instead of them being innate. It is therefore obvious to infer that the behaviour of subjects is altered by the consumption of the products they choose to buy and that basic emotions such as happiness and liberation also come with a market price hence leading to their commodification. This in turn leads to a “passive, apathetic” society, “diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable”, where “the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome”, as Chomsky says.
Globalisation overpowering most nations of the world has greatly affected literature which witnesses numerous traces of it. Major Postmodernist novels today are laid in urban; semi-urban backgrounds with educated characters experiencing the chaos in order. The well planned intentions of capitalist consumer markets are highly focused on alienating the consumer from others by making the individual self absorbed and arrogant. We live in a world of mass media and information overload where there are plenty of options available for us to distract the minute we feel isolated, lonely or bored. The consumer markets very cleverly have provided us with technology such as smart phones that gradually distance us away from reality in the name of ‘personal space’. This personal space is therefore nothing but a facade created by the market that engages us into activities involving more consumption which is exactly what the market desires of us. The information overload, availability of entertainment options and consumer products everywhere around today is hence what has made us believe that we have the power to rebuke any person who desires to question or take up our ‘personal space’. As a consequence, this leads to the mass isolation of the individualistic society where each person desires to live alone in the name of ‘space’. Living alone further strengthens the consumer market by involving the already disillusioned individual into more and more consumption for the distraction of his troubled mind. To conclude therefore, one must understand how the consumer market has rapidly fooled and further disillusioned the modern consumer for its selfish interests.
In order to justify this supposition, one may study Baudrillard’s The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures where he correctly declares that,
“...the consumer’s relation to the real world, to politics, to history, to culture is not a relation of interest, investment or committed responsibility – nor is it one of total indifference: it is a relation of curiosity.” (Baudrillard 52)
Baudrillard rightly suggests that happiness itself is a commodity in the consumer society which can be acquired with the mass consumption of products and services. Such attitudes hence fill the whole society with the negative traits of consumerist disillusionment, perpetual dissatisfaction with life and consequent stress or frustration. By promoting self-absorption, it also creates an undesired level of arrogance and triumphalism in individuals and societies who are indifferent and often cruel to the marginalised thereby soliciting the death of kindness.
Products of their time; men and women in the twenty first century are hence simply mechanized productions or a collection of factory goods with similar behavioural patterns that are defined by the ideology of the market. Neoliberal ideologies that are promoted in developing pro-capitalist nations like India work as forces that map specific market oriented mind-sets among the masses. To quote Weihsin Gui, “political and economic ideology points towards a wider examination of the function of aesthetics as both a technology of neoliberal optimization and a tactic of knowledge production” (174) With masses being unable to decipher their emotional quotients, it leads to a lop-sided growth of the individual with crushing social, psychological and moral value systems. Issues of existential crisis and psychological trauma are hence common in contemporary society.
Termed as ‘Postmodern Vertigo’, many millennials now suffer from a referential sensation paralleled with the medical condition of vertigo. Postmodern Vertigo is a promoted form of existential crisis coupled with chaotic feelings of disbelief of truth in reality or being unable to accept one’s own thought process. Despite globalised changes; socio-political marginalisation is profoundly found in urban and semi-urban societies. With disillusioned Postmodern subjects experiencing marginalisation based on social injustices; we also see a society in India that still holds prejudices based on class, caste and gender. Contemporary socio-economic and socio-psychological strata in society hence need to be estimated for better understanding of the new order.
Booker prise winning author Aravind Adiga, has often worked well in unleashing the cruelties and hypocrisy in a society like India. With pathos as one of the major themes, Adiga writes in a unique Postmodernist fashion where his language expresses the culture and its flaws. Irony and satire are the literary techniques which are most used by the writer in his novels like The White Tiger. Adiga’s works like The White Tiger (2008) and The Last Man in Tower (2011) have shown the presence of power-based themes related with neoliberal impacts that have created a gap in society based on greed and consumption. His Booker Prize winning novel, The White Tiger circulates around the unfairness of contemporary society and its value systems. With the mentioned scholars and philosophies, this paper shall study the presence of Postmodern Vertigo and the underlying causes which converge into the negative impacts of globalisation on society through the medium of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. By observing the text through the new mediums of globalisation, consumerism and class divide, the researcher shall attempt to understand the behaviour of subjects, both marginalised and privileged. The text’s protagonist Balram coming from the lower strata of the Indian society shall assist one to analyse the contemporary socio-political position of ‘free slaves’ working in India. Other characters being given the position of ‘masters’ shall be observed through their patriarchal, classist and consumerist hypocrisy hence making the reader comprehend the advent of global capitalism into pre-modern cultures and the effects they have produced on traditional casteist, classist tendencies in society.
A struggle for survival amidst the bad historical past of caste and class discrimination in India; The White Tiger is the story of Balram Halwai, an intelligent anti-hero whose ambition drove him to become a subjugator of his miseries and an expounder of harsh realities. The book takes the classic epistolary form and makes it a postmodern, cosmopolitan exploration of communication across cultural boundaries as the narrator Balram recounts the events of his life and tells them to the Premier of China, Mr. Jiabao. Balram, in his typical guileless sarcastic tone, tells how his impoverished beginnings led him to become a successful entrepreneur mainly by committing the murder of his master Ashok. The next series of episodes in the letters detail the story of Balram who comes from the tiny village of Laxmangarh that is oppressed by the family of Mr. Ashok. As the story proceeds, we see how Balram moves from Laxmangarh to Dhanbad and then eventually to Gurgaon where he kills his employer to flee to Bangalore with a bag of stolen money. As a criminal, Balram is never identified by the law and he eventually takes on to become a good and rather a more compassionate owner of a taxi chain in the metropolitan city of Bangalore.
The White Tiger’s postmodern and cosmopolitan aspects are highly visible in the traces of Balram’s conduct with his environment, both urban and rural. Besides mentioning the rural to urban migration of the marginalised working class, the book throws light upon the contemporary issues related with working class marginals and their subaltern positions in cities. With a ruthless Horatian tone, Adiga brings poetic justice to the character of Balram and informs his readers about modern evils experienced by the poor living in India. The book’s Postmodernity shall assist us to analyse its text based on the topic of this research paper. With an undertone of Postmodernist interpretation, the research shall focus on the presence of consumerism, disillusionment and otherness experienced by Balram and other characters of the book.
II
In order to understand the presence of Postmodern complexities, disillusionment and capitalist intrusion with culture in The White Tiger, it is important to first understand the living spaces in which the characters reside. The White Tiger serves as an analysis on the extent of extremities and blatant triumphalism a small section of a society can possess based on illogical stereotypes, greed and biases that are dividing the entire nation into two different worlds. The apathy and arrogance of the upper class elite add to the marginalisation of the have-nots hence leading to an unhealthy society. The shameless violence inflicted upon the refugees in France mentioned in Derrida’s essay On Cosmopolitanism can be paralleled with the socio-psychological and physical tortures borne by the urban working class living in India. It is therefore a matter of no surprise when Derrida demands a new concept of the ‘city’ altogether in the following lines.
“This is not to suggest that we ought to restore an essentially classical concept of the city by giving it new attributes and powers; neither would it be simply a matter of endowing the old subject we call ‘the city’ with new predicates. No, we are dreaming of another concept, of another set of rights for the city, of another politics of the city.” (08)
Such demands on part of Derrida can be justified as we read about Adiga’s Delhi in the novel. The concept of the city is one of an entire personality having its own moods and disposition. An area that witnesses great socio-economic and technological advancement, the city creates a hybrid environment whose metamorphosis is so quick and unpredictable that it becomes difficult for the character to adapt. This rapid succession of social changes found in different parts of the city at the same time is what sometimes amazes as well as annoys its characters. This also brings us to contemplate what Nesher says in City-Codes that, “the representation of the city will depend on the cultural and social position of the subject.” An urban space filled only with concrete and consumerism, Delhi makes each character, especially Balram in the novel, to comply with its monotony and pace thereby making him, apathetic, brainless and mechanical just like the way the city is presented in the book. Like a distinct human being with a personality, the city of Delhi is highly trite and wicked with shades of barbarism within. Balram as a marginalised subject experiences similar treatments from the bourgeois which eventually shape his character in the later part of the book. The viciousness of the city seems to be in sync with the growing viciousness in Balram’s character. Presented as complementary with the bourgeois; the city of Delhi seems to be a rude host that aggravates all the negativities of Balram’s mind making him in his own words, “a citified fellow”. In one of the scenes in The White Tiger, the conversation between Balram and the personified version of Delhi showcase the amalgamation of bitterness and darkness of both, the hero and his city:
“Speak to me of civil war, I told Delhi.
I will, she said.
Speak to me of blood on the streets, I told Delhi.
I will, she said. (220)
And if there is blood on these streets—I asked the city—do you promise that he'll be the first to go—that man with the fat folds under his neck?” (221)
Balram’s hate is the consequence of the triumphalism found in the upper class. It is further aggravated by a dormant, almost supernatural malignance and hostility of the city of Delhi towards his character which later compels the frustrated Balram to take the life of his master and snatch his freedom from his clutches. The city darkly seems to assist him towards such villainy as he proceeds to kill Ashok. “The city knew my secret... Even the road—the smooth, polished road of Delhi that is the finest in all of India—knew my secret... it seemed as though there were no government in Delhi that day” (245) A few lines later Balram hallucinates the ministers and bureaucrats of the State encouraging him to proceed with the murder. The escapade hence is an ironic allusion and warning to the Indian bureaucracy and the dangerous collapse it might face in the future if not corrected. A perfect example of becoming what one sees; Balram is never remorseful of his actions because acts like bribing and murder are much justified around him than honesty and hardwork. The city therefore has an important role to play in the sorrowful conversion of Balram from “a sweet innocent village fool into a citified fellow full of debauchery, depravity and wickedness.” (197).
Not only does Balram seem to be a victim to the abrasive brashness but also other characters. Ashok, Pinky, Vitiligo lips among others also undergo a change in relation to the neoliberal monstrosity of the city. Gurgaon and Delhi are filled with mall culture and canned environments around which the characters constantly circle. Even the residential areas are robbed off their natural charm and replaced with concrete constructions. “...the rich of Delhi had built this part of Gurgaon with no parks, lawns, or playgrounds – it was just buildings, shopping malls, hotels and more buildings.” (225) There is a sense of decay and disillusionment in Ashok which later affects his marriage with Pinky. Pinky on the other hand, is also subjected to the dogmatic treatment of Ashok which is distorted with a conflict in his orthodox upbringing and modern values. Vitiligo lips too suffers and projects his resentment in the form of bullying the weak. Consumerist impacts coupled with neoliberal, free market tendencies have created a gap between necessities and luxuries. Besides, with the exploitative elite in the book, even necessities become luxuries hence strengthening the divisions of power between the rich and the poor. Both the rich and the poor in the book are however greatly affected by conspicuous consumption and consumerism. Evidence of these can be collected as we witness the characters in the book so often being blinded with the glamour of city lights that they tend to ignore even their immediate environments besides emotions. Ashok is so busy with his mobile phone that he does not realise the plotting of his own murder; Pinky Madam is so deeply intoxicated with alcohol that she kills a child on the street; Mukesh among other characters in the car are so involved in their own conversations, that are mostly about money, along with their drinks that they are unable to discern Balram eavesdropping on each of their conversations. Postmodern urban spaces hence represent the psychological, spiritual, aesthetic and geographical capture of personal space by the facets of capitalism which in turn vacate us of the earthy charm of aesthetics and spirituality.
The village on the other hand becomes the centre of exploitation in the book. Laxmangarh is the place where power structures frame themselves and the society is divided into two halves. It is also the centre of female subaltern victimization among the marginalised class. It is interesting to note that the village women living in Laxmangarh are given a collective background image where they simply take their roles as homemakers. We are never clearly informed of their names or identities. The only female figure with a distinct identity seems to be the grandmother of Balram. Kusum however takes the responsibility as the head of the family because of the absence of a male figure in the household. Stricken with poverty, all the male members of Balram’s family have left for the city, which serves as another space for the exploitation of the marginalised.
Neoliberal forces, viewed as modern technologies by Weishin Gui, recreate traditional exploitation and give it a new mask thereby making marginalisation charming for the subject who gets exploited. “...a technology of aestheticization modifies and modulates the style, form, and affect of people and things in order to optimize them as better and beautified actors or resources in the global economy.” (174). The same can be viewed in the book in the character of Balram and his likes living in the basement who are fascinated by the lives of their exploitative masters and have reached the city from distant villages in hopes of a better life. The city hence serves as a charming centre of exploitative capitalist forces entertained by the weak.
Highly disillusioned, postmodernist identities undergoing Postmodern Vertigo is another aspect that needs discussion. Otherness being one of the causes behind Balram’s Postmodern Vertigo creates an automated vent in his life as well as a distance from his society. Stated by M. Sreelatha in the essay, Neo-liberal World of Globalization: Existential Struggle in The White Tiger:
The White Tiger is a story about the existential and class struggle of the protagonist. A neo-liberal country like India widens the gap between the rich and poor with its pro-capitalist, free-market policies that privilege a few. (03)
The privileges coupled with corrupt pro-capitalist culture encouraged by men like the Great Socialist and the family of Ashok is therefore sucking the life out of the underprivileged class of Balram. Along with the neo-liberal free market policies, come the numerous consumerist luxuries which are endowed upon the upper class by the government and the social system in The White Tiger. The desire for these services is evidently seen in the upper class characters of Ashok, Pinky, Mukesh, Uma and several politicians among others. Products like alcohol and luxuries are part of their lifestyle which is tempting for Balram as a subject. The novel deeply discusses the issues associated with consumerism through the words of Balram. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator rejects the influence of consumerism and understands how it has brought destructive disillusioned environments for the white man – “the white-skinned man has wasted himself through buggery, mobile phone usage, and drug abuse” (06), Balram says. Balram however fails to realise that he himself is prey to such abuse today. A very similar attitude is reflected in The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures by Baudrillard:
...only some people achieve mastery of an autonomous, rational logic of the elements of the environment (functional use, aesthetic organization, cultural accomplishment). Such people do not really deal with objects and do not, strictly speaking, `consume', whilst the others are condemned to a magical economy, to the valorization of objects as such, and of all other things as objects (ideas, leisure, knowledge, culture): this fetishistic logic is, strictly, the ideology of consumption. (60)
The fetishist control of the consumer market over the general masses hence can be the cause behind the ideological control that the market overpowers us with. Consumerist pretension has penetrated so deep in the mindsets of people that they prioritise money ahead of all things in general. The aspect is vividly seen in The White Tiger wherein the entire plot revolves around the acquisition of power and money. In Baudrillard’s words, the condemnation of the consumers in the magical economy of goods and services can be easily seen in the ignorance found in the characters of The White Tiger. The presence of ‘mall culture’ or ‘canned environments’, in the words of Baudrillard, as found in Gurgaon and Delhi has blinded most characters of the acknowledgement of their own value systems hence rendering them disillusioned. The residential areas are robbed off their natural charm and replaced with concrete constructions. “...the rich of Delhi had built this part of Gurgaon with no parks, lawns, or playgrounds – it was just buildings, shopping malls, hotels and more buildings.” (225)
Another issue that develops the Postmodernist darkness in The White Tiger are relationships which eventually create disillusioned otherness and consequent Postmodern Vertigo among characters. Nearly all relationships in the story are developed on selfish motives. None of the characters share an emotional bond with anyone and consequently are unable to communicate their feelings with each other. One of the primary reasons behind their miscommunication is their constant use of consumerist distraction as a defence mechanism against their emotional vulnerabilities. Marked as a homosexual by many queer theorists; Balram never introspects his sexuality or emotional sensibility with anyone. The only emotional need he manifests is from his master Ashok who unconsciously raises his expectations and then disappoints him. Like every other relationship in the novel, the master-slave association of Ashok and Balram is based on selfishness and hypocrisy. Ashok outwardly sympathises with Balram’s deplorable condition while selfishly using his servant in the defence of his wife. He often pities the state in which Balram is living under the building basement yet never offers him a better place. Other relationships such as that of the Great Socialist and other ministers with the family of the landlords are entirely based on greed and the symbiosis of power, politics and money. Romantic relationships are almost absent as we see various scenes from GB Road, the red light area of Delhi along with other sexual trades between various characters including the protagonist hence indicating the reduction of love and emotion to mere physical need. The married life of Ashok and Pinky ends in separation as we see that the two never seem to understand each other. We notice in the whole story that Ashok, with his unconscious in-bred chauvinism, repetitively ignores the perspectives of Pinky who eventually gives up on him and returns to the States alone. Ashok’s other relationships with women like Uma also remain unfinished and impaired due to his unconscious double standards, insensitivity and inadequacy to understand himself and others. This hence is one of the contributing factors behind the Postmodern Vertigo Ashok suffers with. The relationship between the patriarchs of the landlord family displays the passing of rigid beliefs and prejudices against the social notions of caste, class and women. The irreverence given to the women of the family along with the low caste working class is deeply evident in the conversations of the men in the book. The Stork and his elder son Mukesh aka Mongoose constantly nag Ashok on being too liberal minded with servants and his wife. Their constant interference with his psyche is what makes Ashok a confused Postmodernist soul suffering from Postmodern Vertigo. Other relationships of family like that of Balram and his relatives are also based on monetary need and sufferings. All men are mugged off their incomes by their wives on returning home from the city. There is no place for display of affections and love when the need of the hour is to fill empty stomachs. The only emotive line stated in the text is the one spoken by the grieved father of Balram as he sees his brightest son being withdrawn from school. – “My whole life, I have been treated like a donkey. All I want is that one son of mine – at least one – should live like a man.” (30) Later, as we notice, it is tragically ironic that the concept of ‘living like a man’ itself is so blur in the mind of a poor child as we see Balram idolising the bus conductor Vijay as the best kind of man he could think of. The next man in the category of an idol for Balram is Ashok, who himself is subject to disillusionment and comes from an orthodox family with rigid beliefs about women and the world. His pursuit for the approval of his master leads Balram to stoop so low that it ultimately shocks him. It is then that he begins realising the power of the ‘Rooster-Coop’ and murderous thoughts overcome his innocence which is further magnified by the murderous environs of Delhi as Balram views it. The economic poverty of the family along with them bearing social extremities of being low caste further reduced the socio-economic status of Balram’s family and their likes in the village. The socio-political and cultural position of such people therefore defines their cultural mindset and hence the absence of emotional sensibility found in them.
The combination of unhealthy relationships, chaotic atmosphere of multiculturalism and urban frustration and the use of consumerism as a tool to derive emotional stability is therefore evidently drawing identities suffering from emotional and psychological vertigo in Postmodern literature and society. Disillusionment therefore is the primary consequence of such frustrations that are jointly harming and creating the lop-sided development of the urban citizen. The character of the protagonist of the book is itself the biggest example of such disillusionment and crisis. Being the son of a dead mother and a downtrodden father, Balram is emotionally downcast by his poverty-ridden family and fellow villagers. As he finds some escape into the city in hopes of getting a better life and means, Balram realises that nothing has changed and that he, like many fellow working class men like him, might never come out of the ‘Rooster-Coop’ of class and caste power structures. The city of Delhi on the other hand which sometimes proves as a refuge for such people hence becomes an utterly disappointed experience for Balram. In its vicious presentation, Delhi becomes a large space full of many small rat-like burrows which give space for men and women to find solace for their disillusioned identities. As Hana-Wirth Nesher puts it, the city provides the chance for heteroglossia or multiple voices diversified in their stature to echo the agonies of their class. Similarly, Delhi, in the novel, provides for and assists the novel’s characters to gain such private space for themselves where they can easily become isolated and available victims to the market. To quote Nesher who describes the City as, “a landscape of partial visibilities and manifold possibilities that excludes in the very act of inviting.” (09) might be helpful. Consumerism dissolves the identities of these characters furthermore as each of them involve themselves into “canned” atmospheres of malls and shopping complexes. They get lost in the glamorised market of products and services to such an extent that these characters even commodify human beings along with products as they encounter them. It may be thus concluded, that neo-liberal monstrosities of modern urban locations tend to raise the level of stress and disillusionment among its citizens. Like the protagonist, these citizens are often rendered consumed and helpless, which in turn might later lead them into becoming someone as violent as a psychopath.
Works Cited