The sentimental nightmare: The discourse of the scientific and the aesthetic in Rokeya S. Hossain's "Sultana's Dream". Issue 5 (3rd September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bhattacharya, Atanu; Hiradhar, Preet
• Is Part Of: Journal of postcolonial writing. Volume 55:Issue 5(2019)
• Page Start: 614
• Page End: 627
• Publication Date: 2019-09-03
• Subjects: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain -- science fiction -- Bengali literature -- science -- aesthetics -- Utopia; English literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Postcolonialism in literature -- Periodicals; 820.9
• DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2019.1604403
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-9855

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article examines Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's speculative science fiction story "Sultana's Dream" in the context of science fiction writing in 19th- and 20th-century Bengal. It analyses the story's intersection with a range of discourses and the way this creates a distinctive text. The story is discussed in terms of the key discursive formations that Hossain contends with: that of the "women's question" (with an emphasis on the Muslim woman's question); the nature of the violence that produces a male-dominated state; and the possibility of a scientific–aesthetic intervention capable of countering such male violence. The article argues that Hossain's speculative science fiction, by portraying the liberatory potential of a transformed scientific state apparatus, produces a model of a feminist Utopia which is not grounded simply in gender, but also in the possibility of a state based on a rational aesthetic.