Beyond Indigenisation: Hamlet, Haider, and the Pain of the Kashmiri People. (2nd October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Young, Sandra
• Is Part Of: Shakespeare. Volume 14:Number 4(2018)
• Page Start: 374
• Page End: 389
• Publication Date: 2018-10-02
• Subjects: Indian Shakespeare -- indigeneity -- Kashmir -- Shakespeare adaptation -- world cinema -- Vishal Bhardwaj; Periodicals; 822.33
• DOI: 10.1080/17450918.2017.1351486
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1745-0918

Abstract

ABSTRACT: "Indigenised Shakespeare" offers one way to conceptualise the changes involved in localised reimaginings of Shakespeare's drama, but it carries a complicated legacy. Indigeneity is not innocent of colonialism's dubious hierarchies, however much it seems to privilege what came before. Indigeneity lodges contemporary cultural innovations within a timeframe that reaches deep into history, sealing them off from the chaotic temporality and political entanglements of a world that is simultaneously globalised and specifically located. This essay reflects on the value of this critical lexicon for the field of Global Shakespeare as it grapples with the tensions inherent in a model of cultural transmission and appropriation that risks perpetuating a set of assumptions about Shakespeare's hegemony, even as it attempts to tell a new story, through a discussion of filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj's adaptation of Hamlet . Haider explores the surprising resonances of Hamlet in a very particular time and place: India-administered Kashmir saw a period of intense conflict immediately following the promulgation of the infamous Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1990. The world inhabited by Bhardwaj's modern-day anti-heroic Kashmiri Hamlet, a world where people disappear without trace and the military police torture dissidents with impunity, is infinitely more complex than a term like "indigeneity" could encompass.