The graveyard and the Garden: Reading Connectivities in Rana Dasgupta’s The Changeling

TY - JOUR

T1 - The graveyard and the Garden

T2 - Reading Connectivities in Rana Dasgupta’s The Changeling

AU - Bildsøe, Helle Schulz

AU - Rahbek, Ulla

PY - 2019/6/1

Y1 - 2019/6/1

N2 - In the novel Tokyo Cancelled (2005), Rana Dasgupta explores the contemporary age of globalization as a time of chaotic change. Tokyo Cancelled is composed as a story cycle of 13 tales. This article focuses on one of these tales in particular, “The Changeling”. “The Changeling” relates the tumultuous experiences of Bernard, who is a changeling and archetypal stranger in the pestilence-ridden city of contemporary Paris. The article explores the juxtaposition of systemic and organic networks as the central trope through which Dasgupta explores change and connectivities in a global twenty-first-century moment. We argue that the story presents a process of symbolic transformation whereby the national capital changes into a global city. This change signifies a shift from a national towards a planetary perspective. “The Changeling” comprises at least two different kinds of networks which converge and conflate into one overarching web that is the metropolis: there is a systemic network of control materialized in Montparnasse graveyard and an organic network out of control manifested in a community garden where people congregate to tell stories. Indeed, Dasgupta revisits Benjaminian storytelling as a global networking practice which, while locally contextualized in an impromptu garden in Paris, hints at an awareness of worldwide connectivity.

AB - In the novel Tokyo Cancelled (2005), Rana Dasgupta explores the contemporary age of globalization as a time of chaotic change. Tokyo Cancelled is composed as a story cycle of 13 tales. This article focuses on one of these tales in particular, “The Changeling”. “The Changeling” relates the tumultuous experiences of Bernard, who is a changeling and archetypal stranger in the pestilence-ridden city of contemporary Paris. The article explores the juxtaposition of systemic and organic networks as the central trope through which Dasgupta explores change and connectivities in a global twenty-first-century moment. We argue that the story presents a process of symbolic transformation whereby the national capital changes into a global city. This change signifies a shift from a national towards a planetary perspective. “The Changeling” comprises at least two different kinds of networks which converge and conflate into one overarching web that is the metropolis: there is a systemic network of control materialized in Montparnasse graveyard and an organic network out of control manifested in a community garden where people congregate to tell stories. Indeed, Dasgupta revisits Benjaminian storytelling as a global networking practice which, while locally contextualized in an impromptu garden in Paris, hints at an awareness of worldwide connectivity.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Netværk

KW - historiefortælling

KW - Rana Dasgupta

U2 - 10.1177/0021989416685756

DO - 10.1177/0021989416685756

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0021-9894

JO - The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

JF - The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

IS - January 28, 2017

ER -